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late last year, Mark Miller, a Vancouver-based aviation analyst, bought it airplane Tickets to bring his family of four to Rome this summer. The Millers would spend the high season in Italy hunting ancient city ruins, exploring the Vatican, and swooping down to Sardinia to experience the island’s dramatic sea cliffs, white-sand beaches, and ancient limestone caves.
Five months later, Miller, a commentator for CBC News, watched in disbelief as Iran shut down Al Jazeera Strait of Hormuz– A crucial waterway between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, through which approximately 20% of the world’s oil supplies flow.
The unprecedented shutdown led to a decline in global stocks of jet fuel, depleting strategic reserves in the United Kingdom, Germany and France. “Reports out of Europe suggest that fuel supplies could decline by the end of June, which is roughly when we would have been there,” Miller says. “The last thing we wanted to do was get stuck in Europe.”
The supply shortage extended to the United States as the war in Iran continued. Thursday, An American Airlines spokesperson told USA Today It will temporarily suspend many domestic flights in August and September due to rising jet fuel prices.
In the end, the Millers canceled their trip, along with millions of summer travelers doing the same mental calculation. With airlines canceling thousands of flights ahead of a potential fuel shortage, Miller and other analysts have turned their attention to sustainable aviation fuel, known as SAF, which can cut emissions by up to 80 percent but costs two to five times the price of regular jet fuel. United Airlines, Delta, American and Cathay Pacific are among the carriers now using the SAF.
“Right now, it looks like the cost of conventional jet fuel will be twice as high in the summer travel season,” says Lauren Reilly, chief sustainability officer at United Airlines. “This makes SAF look like a more financially competitive alternative. In fact, it’s the closest to parity we’ve ever seen. This is the first time in my career that we’ve actually had conversations about this.”
Before the blockade, the summer of 2026 was preparing for the return of commercial aviation after Covid-19. with Football World CupDemand for summer travel has never been stronger, says Reilly, America’s semi-centennial celebrations and Harry Styles’ “Together, Together” world tour.
With prices rising and demand increasing, the aviation industry hopes Sudan Airlines can help fill the gap. Made from renewable resources such as used cooking oil and leftover French fry grease, SAF can be blended with conventional jet fuel as an alternative without having to change the aircraft’s design.
US company World Energy began converting agricultural waste, fats, oils and grease into SAF at its production facility in Paramount, California in 2016, becoming the first commercial-scale producer of the fuel. “There is hardly any difference between the treatment process and the blending process,” says Joseph Rahn, vice president of asset optimization at World Energy. “Just add an additional blending step of mixing the SAF and fossil fuels.”
The technology is simple, according to Ran. The problem is creating a reliable supply. Bottlenecks such as scarcity of raw materials called feedstocks, complex infrastructure, and expensive production processes have kept industry use of SAF below 1 percent of total global jet fuel consumption. World Energy, which supplied SAF to United Airlines, Air France, KLM and others, ended SAF production last year “as part of an overall effort to better focus the company’s resources,” according to a company spokesman.
But this year’s oil crisis highlighted the need for an alternative to jet fuel. “The strait closure was a very vivid example of over-reliance on a single commodity,” says Scott Lewis, head of World Energy’s Net-Zero services group. In April, United formed a consortium with Microsoft, DSV and Houston-based multinational energy company Phillips 66 to scale up production and launch 11 million gallons of SAF.
