Flight100

In November 2023, Virgin Atlantic operated the world’s first 100% Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) transatlantic flight by a commercial airline. The incredible feat was the culmination of over a year of radical collaboration by a Virgin Atlantic led consortium of partners, including Boeing, Rolls-Royce, Imperial College London, University of Sheffield, ICF and Rocky Mountain Institute and part funded by Department for Transport.

Dry scientific topics and world firsts don’t however make for an easy PR campaign – especially when juggling the comms needs of a huge number of partners, pushing the Government for change (whilst working with them as a partner) and activating in a media climate that’s hyper aware of greenwashing. As well as ensuring the world knew about the flight and its importance, we needed to articulate that this was a proof of concept exercise and that results would be open source to the benefit of all, far from greenwashing. We were driving change and pushing our core message across the over a year long campaign: ‘If enough SAF is made, we will fly it’. The comms team developed a strategy that used the power of our brand and partners, a sprinkle of Sir Richard Branson and a heavy dose of lobbying to see this campaign take flight. The approach delivered positive, global coverage with over 6,000 hits, including mass broadcast coverage with x40 hits in the US and UK alone and a 10pt brand purpose score increase.