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Revealed: Airlines want £2bn handout to cover cost of ‘green’ fuel

Virgin Atlantic, BA and EasyJet blasted over ‘outrageous’ request for taxpayers to subsidise their passengers

By Ben Webster
Revealed: Airlines want £2bn handout to cover cost of ‘green’ fuel
The engines of British Airways Airbus A319/A320/A321 aircraft. BA's owner International Airlines Group, EasyJet, and Virgin Atlantic were among airline companies that lobbied for taxpayer cash to cover the costs of using 'green' fuel | Colin Fisher/Alamy Live News
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Airlines are lobbying the government for billions of pounds in handouts to help them cover the cost of new ‘greener’ fuel, openDemocracy can reveal.

Freedom of Information requests by this website found Virgin Atlantic, British Airways and easyJet are among the companies demanding public money to help them meet a requirement to use “sustainable aviation fuel” (SAF).

But green campaigners said it was “outrageous” that taxpayers – 50% of whom do not fly at all in any given year – were being asked to stump up for SAF. Under a planned government mandate, 10% of jet fuel will have to be made from ‘sustainable sources’ by 2030.

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Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0