Technology
Saffron Air trials a one-percent blend and refuses to call it a transition
One departure bank out of Mumbai will fly with a sliver of sustainable fuel. The airline’s own note says the sliver is a measurement, not a promise.
David Khoury
Markets correspondent
Mumbai4 min
Saffron Air will operate one Mumbai departure bank next week on a one-percent sustainable-aviation-fuel blend supplied by a domestic refiner that has asked, for now, not to be the headline. One percent will not change the airline’s annual carbon account in a way a reader can see. The airline’s internal note says that is the point.
“If we announce a transition off the back of a tanker, we are lying,” said the note, which operations chief Nabil Shah confirmed was his. “We are checking whether the fuel comes, whether the paperwork survives the bowser, and whether the crew notice anything. They should not.”
The blend is priced above the jet on the desk tape. Saffron is not hedging it. It is buying a week. The policy desk in Montreal is still arguing about baselines; the Mumbai desk is arguing about a hose. Both are the same subject seen from different distances.
Passengers will not be told they are on the trial bank, because there is nothing for them to do with the information except feel either virtuous or suspicious. The measurement Saffron wants is in the fuel farm’s log and in a boroscope inspection after the week. If both are boring, the airline will buy another week. If either is interesting, it will stop and say so. That is a more serious climate policy than the poster it declined to print.
