The Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore has confirmed the SAF Levy will proceed on its previously deferred timeline, applying to origin-destination passengers and general and business aviation flights departing Singapore from 1 January 2027, for tickets sold from 1 October 2026, as first announced last November. Alongside confirming the timeline, CAAS detailed how SAF environmental attributes purchased through the levy will actually be allocated, disclosed that Singapore Sustainable Aviation Fuel Company Ltd (SAFCo) has completed its first voluntary SAF procurement trial, and deferred the levy separately for air cargo shipments by a further year.
How the Environmental Attributes Actually Get Split
All SAF Levies collected flow into a statutory SAF Fund, managed by SAFCo, a non-profit company wholly owned by CAAS, which procures and allocates both the physical SAF and its associated environmental attributes (EAs), tracked separately from the fuel itself. Those EAs split into two components: Scope 1 EAs go to aircraft operators, allocated in proportion to their relative SAF Levy contributions, to support CORSIA compliance and ICAO's 2050 net-zero goal, covering an expected 80-plus passenger aircraft operators with material contribution volumes. Scope 3 EAs, along with any unallocated Scope 1 EAs, are centrally managed by SAFCo and made available to organizations seeking to reduce emissions tied to business travel and air freight, with proceeds from those sales recycled into purchasing more SAF.
The Voluntary Trial's Participants, Named for the First Time
SAFCo completed procurement for its first voluntary SAF trial in August 2026, with nine participants: the Boston Consulting Group, Changi Airport Group, DBS Bank, GenZero, Google, OCBC, Temasek, and airlines Singapore Airlines and Scoot. This directly confirms and names the voluntary trial this series referenced back in April, when SIA and CAAS indicated the trial was proceeding on schedule even as the mandatory levy's own timeline had been deferred; this announcement is the first time the full participant list and outcome have been disclosed.
What Comes Next for the Mandatory Levy Itself
SAFCo plans to launch a Request for Proposal for SAF procurement funded by the mandatory levy by the end of 2026, with the first batch of levy-procured SAF expected to be delivered and uplifted in mid-2027, roughly five to six months after the levy itself begins applying to ticket sales. That gap between levy collection starting and physical fuel delivery is a detail worth noting: SAFCo will be collecting levy revenue for several months before the first SAF purchased with that revenue is actually delivered.
Why Cargo Gets a Separate, Longer Deferral
CAAS is pushing back the cargo shipment levy by a further year, to services sold from 1 October 2027 for flights departing from 1 January 2028, citing cargo operations' greater complexity: a wider range of stakeholders, including airlines, air express companies, freight forwarders and shippers, and more varied commercial arrangements than passenger ticketing. That distinction between passenger and cargo timelines reflects a genuine structural difference in how each side of the industry organizes its commercial relationships, not simply a broader, uniform delay.
Reading This Against Singapore's Regional Ambitions
CAAS Director-General Han Kok Juan framed the entire framework as laying the foundation for Singapore to serve as a trusted hub for SAF-related economic activities in the region, language consistent with the broader Singapore-as-SAF-hub narrative this series has tracked since its earliest pieces on the original levy announcement and subsequent deferral.
Source: Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore, 3 September 2026.
