A flight took off from Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport last week with used cooking oil in its tank. The journey was Air France-KLM's first long-haul trip using sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), a biofuel made by Total in France.

"The biofuel used for this flight was made from waste and residue sourced from the circular economy," Air France-KLM said in a statement.

"Total produced the SAF from used cooking oil at its La Mède biorefinery in southern France and at its Oudalle factory near Le Havre, without using any virgin plant-based oil."

Air France-KLM intends to harness the power of biofuel to halve its emissions over the next decade.

"Sustainable aviation fuels constitute our main lever in the medium-term for reducing our CO2 emissions per passenger/km by half by 2030," Air France-KLM CEO, Benjamin Smith, said.

As a nation, France is cracking down on the impact of its mobility sector with the government recently announcing domestic travel will be banned for destinations that can be reached by train in less than two hours.

From next year, all flights leaving France will be required to use at least 1 per cent SAF. This will increase to 2 per cent by 2025 and 5 per cent by 2030 under the European Green Deal.

Last week's Paris to Montreal flight used 16 per cent SAF with no impact on the reliability of the plane's operation.

The companies involved in getting the flight off the ground said it represents a “shared ambition to decarbonise air transportation and to develop a SAF supply chain in France.”

Positive Environment News has been compiled using publicly available information. Planet Ark does not take responsibility for the accuracy of the original information and encourages readers to check the references before using this information for their own purposes.