It's bad enough for some prop airplanes to be explained as being powered by elastic band. Now the cynics could begin having a dig at commercial airplane flying on whatever from cooking oil to melted algae.
With the civil air travel market under increasing pressure from rising oil prices and environmental legislation, the race is on to discover viable alternatives to traditional kerosene and these up until now seem to come down to numerous kinds of biofuel.
Not surprisingly, the first trials of alternative fuel were initiated by British air travel leader, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic began London to Amsterdam flights with limited biofuel usage in 2008. This was rapidly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each utilized various blends of regular fuel and bio derivatives consisting of some from made from jatropha which can grow in soil thought about too bad for growing mainstream foods items.
Jatropha is a genus of roughly 175 succulent plants, shrubs and trees (some are deciduous, like Jatropha curcas), from the family Euphorbiaceae.
In 2007 Goldman Sachs mentioned Jatropha jatropha curcas as one of the best prospects for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to drought and bugs, and produces seeds consisting of 27-40% oil.
Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aerial significant Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation moved to perform research study and development into using biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airlines Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would serve as strategic consultants for the project.

The current airline to start experimenting with new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has carried out internal US flights utilizing a mix of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mixture, it is declared, can cut damaging emissions by 10%.

One really encouraging advancement has been the relocation far from biofuels which contend head on with food customers therefore avoiding a price spiral. Not so long ago, a surge in use of biofuels in automobiles caused a spike in maize rates as US farmers diverted too much corn to fuel processing.
Hopefully in the future, airline companies and drivers will focus biofuel consumption on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a mixed true blessing certainly if some people ended up starving simply to please somebody else's green qualifications.