American Airlines and Google sign record SAF deal to cut flight emissions | carboncredit.io

American Airlines and Google have signed the largest publicly reported sustainable aviation fuel certificate agreement between an airline and a single corporate customer. The deal covers 35 million gallons of SAF over three years, delivered at Chicago O'Hare, with Google receiving the environmental benefits to offset emissions from employee business travel. That volume equates to roughly 300,000 metric tons of CO2 equivalent reductions compared to conventional jet fuel. The agreement uses SAF certificates (SAFc), which separate the fuel's environmental attributes from the physical fuel. This allows Google to claim Scope 3 emission reductions from air travel. The SAF will come from waste-based feedstocks like used cooking oil and can be blended with conventional fuel without infrastructure changes. The partnership also builds on earlier work between the two companies on contrail avoidance, where flight planning tools reduced persistent contrail formation by about 62 percent on transatlantic routes. The deal matters because SAF currently accounts for well under 1 percent of global jet fuel demand. By locking in corporate demand, it sends a stronger signal to producers and helps justify new offtake contracts. State-level incentives, like Illinois' SAF tax credit, also help narrow the cost gap. The agreement shows how corporate travel buyers are pushing aviation decarbonization forward through direct fuel-linked purchases rather than traditional carbon credits.