SAF No Longer Seen As Short-Term Sustainability Pathway

MIAMI—After years of industry enthusiasm around sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) as aviation’s primary pathway to net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, some airline executives say high costs, limited supply and scalability concerns have tempered expectations.

“SAF’s such a joke.” Breeze Airways CEO David Neeleman said at the Aviation Festival Americas conference in Miami on June 3. “I cannot believe especially Europe got so sucked into the SAF thing ... If [airlines] go 100% SAF, about three quarters of you will not have a job, you will have to go find something else to do, because no one will be able to travel.”

WestJet CEO Alexis von Hoensbroech agreed SAF remained too expensive and difficult to scale in the near term, though he stopped short of dismissing it entirely. “I think the jury is out on SAF right now,” he said, adding that SAF could eventually become viable, though he questioned whether production capacity and clean energy infrastructure would develop quickly enough to satisfy aggressive European Union (EU) mandates. “On the short term and within the time frames that, for instance, the EU is driving it, there’s no way it’s going to work,” von Hoensbroech said.

Several executives pointed instead to operational improvements and technology upgrades that could reduce emissions immediately without fundamentally changing aviation’s fuel supply chain. LATAM Airlines Group CEO Roberto Alvo cited Europe’s fragmented air traffic control system as one of the clearest opportunities. “[IATA director general Willie Walsh] has been very vocal, for example, with respect to the air traffic control system in Europe, and how bad it is,” Alvo said. “Is it a path to net zero? No, of course not. But it’s a huge potential improvement.”

Neeleman also argued that aviation should focus on more efficient engines and broader electrification of ground transportation rather than forcing airlines into expensive SAF mandates. Electrification, he added, made more sense in trucking than aviation because of the physics involved in flight.

American Airlines VP of sustainability Jill Blickstein said airlines initially underestimated the scale and complexity of creating an entirely new aviation fuel market. “We had some hubris about how this was all going to happen,” Blickstein acknowledged.

Blickstein said American used approximately 14 million gallons of SAF in 2025 against roughly 4.5 billion gallons of conventional jet fuel consumption, illustrating the scale challenge facing the industry. “SAF costs two to three times what regular jet fuel costs,” Blickstein said. Feedstock competition and environmental concerns surrounding crop-based fuels also continued complicating efforts to scale production. Still, Blickstein said airlines had made some progress through SAF credit programs that allowed corporate customers to help offset the premium cost of the fuel. “That’s what’s allowing us to buy SAF today,” she said.

Alaska Airlines head of corporate development Pasha Saleh said conventional jet fuel remained extraordinarily difficult to replace because it was uniquely suited to aviation. “We discovered the ideal fuel for aviation, except it has this nasty byproduct,” Saleh said. “It’s very hard to replace something that had near perfect qualities for what it was meant to do.”

Oneworld director of sustainability and innovation Matthew Ridley conceded that the industry had moved beyond the early hype cycle surrounding SAF and gained a more realistic understanding of which technologies and pathways may ultimately succeed. “We now know a little bit more about what the solutions are that are going to work and not work,” Ridley said. He described replacing conventional jet fuel as “the last great kind of challenge for aviation.”