Virgin Atlantic has been told that it shouldn’t have claimed in a radio ad that its ground-breaking transatlantic flight powered only by waste animal fat and sugars from industrial corn starch used ‘100% sustainable aviation fuel’.

Advertising watchdogs said that since the fuel used still had a negative environmental impact the claim was misleading.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) investigated the radio ad, aired last November, following complaints from five people who challenged whether the claim that Flight 100 from London Heathrow to New York JFK on 28 November 2023 was the worlds’ first commercial transatlantic flight on ‘100% sustainable fuel’ could be substantiated.

Virgin had launched the flight after winning a competition run by the Department for Transport to ‘support industry to achieve the first net zero transatlantic flight on an aircraft using 100% sustainable aviation fuel within one year’.

However, the ASA said a ‘significant proportion’ of listeners would understand the claim ‘100% sustainable aviation fuel’ to mean that the fuel used was 100% sustainable.

It said the Virgin’s own research showed that roughly 30% of respondents believed that sustainable aviation fuel had ‘zero impact on the environment’, which was false.

In fact, Virgin’s Flight 100 had delivered lifecycle emissions savings of only 64%.

In its ruling, the ASA said consumers were ‘unlikely to be aware of the extent to which fuels described as sustainable aviation fuel still had negative environmental impacts, and in what ways’.

It added: “Those listeners who interpreted the claim ‘100% sustainable aviation fuel’ to mean that the fuel was 100% sustainable were likely to expect that it had no negative environmental impacts at all.”

Virgin was told that future ads must explain the environmental impact of any sustainable aviation fuel used.