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By Scott Hamilton

March 31, 2025, © Leeham News: Airbus last week announced a program to boost Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) called Book and Claim. Its purpose is to buy SAF credits in one location and take credit for them in another.

The buyer can then claim in its corporate reports that it is meeting environmental goals, at least in part.

“This initiative aims to boost both supply and demand for SAF worldwide, providing a flexible and scalable solution to accelerate SAF adoption,” Airbus said at its annual environmental Aviation Summit.

“In simple terms, the book and claim approach allows a buyer to 'book' a certain amount of SAF and ‘claim’ the corresponding emission reduction, even if the fuel is used elsewhere. Through a pilot program running throughout 2025, Airbus will leverage this system to improve SAF accessibility for potential customers, particularly those with limited volumes and far from supply points,” the company said.

It's an admirable effort for an industry that has so far fallen dramatically short of the SAF goals outlined by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) at its 2021 Annual General Meeting in Boston (MA).

However, LNA is skeptical about the effort. Carbon credits, which appear to be a variation, failed when airlines tried them. United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby called carbon offsets a “fig leaf” and “mostly a fraud.”

In land use regulations, Book and Claim sounds suspiciously like wetland mitigation programs. This is where a wetland is filled in for development and a new one may be created miles away, offsetting the environmental damage in the original location. At least this is the theory, and it’s essentially pencil-whipping. Nature doesn’t work this way for wetlands. LNA isn’t convinced it works this way for carbon, either.