Qantas has called on Australia to follow the lead of Europe, Japan and the UK by introducing a mandatory sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) blending mandate to help jump-start local production. "Several of the countries we fly to have already committed to blending mandates of 5 to 10 per cent by 2030, and others are well on the path to introducing one. Australia has significant advantages for SAF production and there's a great opportunity to create a new domestic industry," says Qantas's chief sustainability officer Andrew Parker. "Without the right policy settings and signals, we will see investment, projects and feedstocks move offshore to places with specific policy support." Qantas uplifts SAF-blended fuel for its flights from London and from 2025 has committed to take 20 million litres per year for flights out of California. The airline says, however, that Australia lacks a commercial-scale SAF industry, and the mandate would help to boost investment in scalable facility. The call to Canberra comes as Qantas committed to invest an additional A$110 million ($71.8 million) towards its Climate Fund, which will be focused on scaling SAF opportunities, offsets and operational efficiency. This comes on top of an earlier A$290 million co-investment with Airbus in the fund, which has so far focused on developing alcohol-to-SAF refinery in Queensland. It adds that a further 12 domestic SAF projects are under assessment, with over 50 non-disclosure agreements and memoranda of understandings signed. "We're determined to be a leader in this space and that's supported by the new commitments we've made today, as well as calling for more action industry-wide in the form of a sustainable aviation fuel mandate," says chief financial officer and chief executive-designate Vanessa Hudson. Finnish energy company Neste has said previously that mandates are necessary in Asia-Pacific to help drive investment in SAF production, which is well behind that in Europe.

Lufthansa Group has disclosed that around 200,000 passengers opted for a "Green Fares" flight in the first 100 days since its launch in mid-February. The Zurich-London route operated by Swiss saw the highest number of Green Fares bookings, followed by Hamburg-Munich by Lufthansa, the Germany-based airline group says. Green Fares tickets include the costs associated with offsetting CO2 emissions, with 80% of the offsets coming from contributions to "high-quality climate protection projects" and 20% coming from the use of SAF, the group adds. The new fare category is offered by Lufthansa, Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines, Swiss, Edelweiss, Eurowings Discover and Air Dolomiti on more than 730,000 flights per year within Europe and to Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. The group says currently 3% of passengers offset CO2 emissions through one of its offers along the travel chain. It aims to inspire 5% of its passengers to travel more sustainably by the end of the year. Lufthansa Group also aims to halve its net CO2 emissions compared to 2019 by 2030 and achieve a neutral CO2 balance by 2050.

Boeing has forecast that total deliveries in 2023 of new 737 Max aircraft are likely to fall within the company's original target range of 400-450 jets, despite recent fuselage manufacturing issues affecting their production. The speed with which the fuselage fittings issue is corrected will determine whether the total number of Max deliveries falls within the high or low end of that range, Boeing's finance chief Brian West said on 25 May during the Wolfe Research Global Transportation and Industrials Conference in New York. Spirit AeroSystems in April submitted to Boeing a notification of escapement (NOE) alerting the airframer to a quality issue on the aft fuselage section of certain models of the 737 fuselage that Spirit builds. Boeing disclosed in mid-April that the issue "will likely affect a significant number of undelivered 737 Max airplanes, both in production and in storage", adding that it expects deliveries of Max aircraft to be delayed in the near term. During the 25 May call, West said: "As we think about deliveries on the 737, April was 18 [deliveries], [which] was pretty much expected given when this NOE hit. "We still expect the first half of the year to be about 30 per month and the back half to be about 40 per month. That puts us right within the range of our 400-450 deliveries for this calendar year on the 737. "That range will be dictated by the performance of this recovery on the 737 fuselage. So far so good." West notes that Boeing has dedicated "lots of resources" to working with Spirit and has begun to deliver out of inventory "reworked", fully corrected Max aircraft affected by the NOE. "The times that we had thought we'd take on the front end and the back end [of this process] is holding firm. So, good progress. [There's] more work to do but there is a level of confidence with the team." West is seeing improvement in the global supply chain, which continues to be impaired coming out of the Covid-19 pandemic. "[It's] better, but not healed," he says, adding: "That will always be something that we're going to be very focused on – trying to make sure that we can do all we can to help that supply base heal." Both Spirit and Boeing have kept their goals of increasing aircraft production. The Kansas-based shipset provider aims to increase 737 production to 38 aircraft per month in August and to 42 per month in October. The company expects to deliver 390-420 Max fuselages to Boeing by the end of 2023. Boeing seeks to increase Max production to 50 per month by 2025 while increasing the pace of shipments to avoid overloading its inventory.