Our Mission

The Sustainable Aviation Foundation (SAF) is an all-volunteer, non-profit, 501c3 organization, dedicated to promoting human flourishing through advances in aviation. We focus on the application of electric aviation at a meaningful scale to help solve the pressing problems of our age:

  1. Climate change and climate-related disasters
  2. Surface gridlock and the attendant losses of human happiness and productivity
  3. The need for sane and humane urban planning for billions of humans

We believe this mandate is underserved by existing initiatives, and that by bringing together experts and practitioners from a wide array of disciplines we can collectively advance Urban Air Mobility (UAM) as a sustainable and practical mass-transit solution.

Our activities towards these goals include the following:

  • Programming and hosting of the Sustainable Aviation Symposium, a yearly conference attracting enthusiasts, academics and industry members from around the world to discuss the latest developments in e-Flight and related developments
  • Consulting and thought-leadership on UAM and e-Flight initiatives to public and private groups, including policymakers, elected officials and media
  • Hosting and sponsoring eFlight news coverage through our online journal SustainableSkies.org
  • Outreach and development of student and educational partners to grow the future of e-Flight in multi-disciplinary university programs

Sustainable Aviation Foundation, Incorporated is an all-volunteer, non-profit, 501c3 educational organization organized and operated exclusively for public, charitable and educational purposes as a private foundation. It is recognized by the IRS as a tax-exempt private foundation under Section 501 (c) (3) of the Internal Revenue Code.

History of the Sustainable Aviation Foundation

The non-profit Sustainable Aviation Foundation (SA) was founded in 2015 in response to emerging needs and opportunities in the field of sustainable and especially electric aviation. SA’s volunteer Board Members are the founding stewards of the electric aircraft movement and they are pilots and builders of experimental aircraft.

SA President Dr. Brien Seeley founded and was president of the CAFE Foundation for 34 years, and chaired the first-ever Electric Aircraft Symposium in 2007. Dr. Seeley now chairs the annual Sustainable Aviation Symposium dedicated to advancing the RST system that he introduced in his peer-reviewed AIAA papers.

Dr. Seeley was the founder and director of the NASA Green Flight Challenge, sponsored by Google. The GFC was won by a 4-seat pure electric aircraft that, using geothermal energy, flew the 200-mile course above Sonoma County at 107 mph while getting 403 passenger miles per gallon. NASA called the GFC “A Lindbergh Moment” and “the Dawn of the Age of Electric Flight”. The GFC was so successful in leveraging taxpayer dollars, that the Obama White House issued an order through OSTP that all Cabinet Agencies should use tech prizes to achieve their future goals. Accordingly, SA has created its new tech prize, the Sustainable Aviation Challenge, to bring forth the ideal practical Sky Taxi for RST.