The ability to fly is one of humanity’s greatest achievements. Aviation connects people, allows businesses to reach markets all around the world, and moves high-value goods faster than any other mode of transportation can.

And the world wants more of it. Global air passenger demand is expected to more than double by 2050. The challenge is that aviation cannot simply scale today’s system to meet tomorrow’s demand. Fuel is already one of the industry’s largest operating costs, and airlines continue to be exposed to volatile global energy markets and supply disruptions. At the same time, aviation needs to dramatically reduce its climate impact as the sector grows.

At Breakthrough, we see a massive opportunity to meet that growth with better technology; to improve and expand a system people increasingly depend on while making flight more affordable, reliable, and clean.

The aviation industry is extremely demanding when it comes to innovation, and for good reason. Aircraft needs to be light enough to fly while also being reliable enough to operate for long periods of time and economical enough to compete in a business where fuel is a major operating expense. And of course, technologies must satisfy an exceptionally high bar for safety and performance.

These constraints create a complex map for innovation; there is no single technology that will define the next era of flight. Electrification has great potential for short regional routes. Long-haul aviation requires energy-dense liquid fuels. Some improvements are even possible without changing the aircraft at all.

We back a number of programs and companies working across this landscape. The best solutions can help airlines serve growing demand at lower cost, reduce climate impact, strengthen fuel supply, and expand access to flight for more people and communities.

Expanding the SAF Market

Long-haul flights present the hardest physics. Planes that cross oceans require a massive amount of energy without too much added weight. Batteries are still much too heavy for far distances, which is why liquid fuels will remain essential to aviation for a long time. They also fit within a long-established system of aircraft, airports, pipelines, storage, and fueling infrastructure.

Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) gives aviation a way to use new feedstocks and production technologies while continuing to rely on the energy density and infrastructure advantages liquid fuels offer. The opportunity ahead is building production pathways that can compete on cost at the volume airlines need.

That’s why we partnered with oneworld Alliance and leading airlines to create the oneworld BEV Fund. Alaska Airlines, American Airlines, and IAG are founding partners, joined by Cathay Pacific, Japan Airlines, and Singapore Airlines. Boeing and SKY express have also joined the syndicate, expanding the effort across a broader set of aviation partners. Bringing airlines and other partners directly into the fund connects our investment and technical expertise with customers that understand firsthand what new fuels need to deliver on cost, performance, and scale.

We are backing a variety of approaches to get there. Two of our first investments from the fund start from very different places: one is rethinking how synthetic fuel is produced, while the other is developing an entirely new source of oil for an established SAF refining process.

Lydian is tackling one of the biggest barriers facing synthetic aviation fuel: cost. Its PIVOT platform combines hydrogen and captured CO2 to produce a synthetic crude oil that can be refined into drop-in aviation fuel, but with a different approach to the design of the plant itself. Lydian is developing smaller, more productive reactors in standardized, factory-built modules that can operate flexibly when or where renewable feedstocks are cheapest. The approach can cut plant capital costs by more than half, creating a path to make synthetic fuel more competitive as production scales.

Phykion is tackling a different constraint: feedstock. Although algae have long been considered a promising source of oil for fuel, they have historically not succeeded at producing the oil in large enough quantities at the economics needed to scale. According to Phykion, that has now changed. Its proprietary genetic engineering platform has delivered order-of-magnitude gains in oil productivity, and has demonstrated those advances under outdoor at-scale growing conditions with algae designed to grow on non-arable land using only sunlight, CO2, and seawater. The resulting oil works with existing Hydroprocessed Esters and Fatty Acids (HEFA) refining infrastructure, creating a potential new source of SAF feedstock without requiring an entirely new fuel system.

Important innovation is also happening across other clean fuel feedstocks. Across our portfolio, Koloma and Mantle8 are pursuing geologic hydrogen, while Electric Hydrogen and H2Pro are working to bring down the cost of electrolytic hydrogen. M2X Energy is converting stranded and waste methane into methanol, a transportable molecule that can be used as a fuel or as an input for other fuels and chemicals.

Collectively, these technologies expand the option pool for producing the building blocks behind future clean fuels. Which pathways ultimately scale will come down to the technologies that can push costs down—and the builders capable of turning them into durable companies.

Electrifying Shorter Flight

Shorter routes allow electric and hybrid propulsion to compete for regional travel. Batteries cannot match the energy density of jet fuel, but they are able to transform the economics for lower-range distances.

Heart Aerospace in our portfolio is developing the ES-36, a 36-passenger hybrid-electric aircraft designed to fly short-haul routes at over 40% lower aircraft operating costs. This summer, Heart successfully completed a test flight of X1, the largest electric aircraft ever to fly, using only ~$5 of electricity for the flight; an early proof point for the operating-cost advantage electric propulsion could unlock.

That advantage has real potential to change regional aviation, where many routes are difficult to operate economically today. Reduced energy and maintenance costs can help make regional connections more attractive for airlines. Electric propulsion also produces a lot less noise than traditional planes, an important consideration for airports that are in close proximity to the communities they serve.

Electric aviation does not need to solve every flight mission to create a significant market. Its technical and economic benefits are already beginning to show where the technology can outperform existing systems.

Smarter Routes, Starting Now

Innovation can also reduce aviation’s climate impact without requiring a new plane or new fuel.

Contrails are the heat-trapping condensation trails that can form behind planes when hot engine exhaust meets cold, humid air at high altitude. They cause about 1–2% of global warming, but since most of that impact comes from a small share of flights, minor adjustments in altitude or routing can prevent many contrails at almost no cost. That makes contrail management one of the most practicable and scalable near-term climate wins in aviation.

Contrails.org works with a multidisciplinary network of organizations to develop and test these tools using weather forecasts, satellite imagery, and other data. In a recent trial with American Airlines and Google Research spanning 2,400 transatlantic flights, planes that were given contrail-avoidance routes formed 62% fewer contrails, reducing estimated contrail warming by roughly 69%. The trial also found no statistically significant difference in fuel use between contrail-avoiding flights and the control group.

Airlines already reroute planes around weather and turbulence. The tools Contrails.org is building can be another input in those decisions using existing planes and infrastructure. Contrail management is a prime example of how much progress can come from improving the system we already have.

Building the Next Flight Economy

Aviation is a difficult market to enter. The industry already has enormous global infrastructure, established customers, and decades of operating expertise. The strongest new technologies can plug into it, improve the economics, and scale through an already-existing market.

That puts a premium on innovation that can solve a specific piece of the aviation puzzle exceptionally well; whether it’s a routing tool that reduces climate impact at almost no added cost, an aircraft that makes regional service more viable, or a fuel pathway that works with existing engines and infrastructure while improving supply and economics.

Aviation rewards technologies that prove themselves in the sky, in the real world. Once they do, the size of the market can carry them a long way. That is the threshold we invest against at Breakthrough: solutions that perform better than business as usual, earn widespread adoption, and strengthen their economics as they grow.