You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.

Hey, Shire Waver, is Regina Barber here.

And Emily Kwong, and today we are taking to the skies on the wings of cooking oil.

Well, today, Flight 100 is flying from London to New York on sustainable fuel.

Okay, that's Richard Branson.

Yes.

Okay.

The co-founder of the Virgin Group.

Was this the first flight run entirely on alternative jet fuel?

Yes.

Virgin Atlantic in 2023 operated a flight powered by biofuel and a synthetic alternative made from plant sugars.

This flight was incredibly expensive, receiving up to 1 million British pounds from the UK government, all to

prove a scientific point that a plane can fully run on something other than jet fuel, which, as you

know, comes from fossil fuels. I love this, because what's getting us into the air now,

it's not great for a planet. No. At any given moment, there are thousands of planes in the air, and jet fuel is the only thing, energy dense enough and cheap enough to keep that industry aloft.

But the war in Iran has put a damper on those economics.

Ryan Spees, the managing director of sustainability for Alaska Airlines, is definitely feeling the pinch.

We were on track for a really, really great year, and fuel prices have, you know, put us back

hundreds of millions of dollars.

Right.

The Strait of Hormuz has been effectively closed for months.

So some airlines are running low on fuel.

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