It's bad enough for some prop aircrafts to be explained as being powered by elastic band. Now the cynics might start having a dig at commercial aircraft flying on everything from cooking oil to liquefied algae.

With the civil aviation industry under increasing pressure from increasing oil prices and environmental legislation, the race is on to find practical options to standard kerosene and these so far seem to come down to numerous kinds of biofuel.

Not surprisingly, the first trials of alternative fuel were started by travel leader, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic began London to Amsterdam flights with limited biofuel use in 2008. This was quickly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each utilized different blends of regular fuel and bio derivatives including some from made from jatropha curcas which can grow in soil thought about too bad for growing mainstream foods items.

jatropha curcas is a genus of approximately 175 succulent plants, shrubs and trees (some are deciduous, like Jatropha curcas), from the household Euphorbiaceae.

In 2007 Goldman Sachs pointed out Jatropha curcas as one of the very best candidates for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to dry spell and bugs, and produces seeds containing 27-40% oil.

Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aerial significant Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation moved to perform research and advancement into the use of biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airline companies Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would function as strategic experts for the project.

The current airline company to start explore brand-new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has actually conducted internal US flights using a mix of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mixture, it is claimed, can cut damaging emissions by 10%.

One really encouraging advancement has been the relocation away from biofuels which complete head on with food consumers thus avoiding a price spiral. Not so long earlier, a surge in use of biofuels in cars and trucks caused a spike in maize rates as US farmers diverted too much corn to fuel processing.

Hopefully in the future, airlines and drivers will focus biofuel usage on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a combined true blessing indeed if some people ended up starving simply to please someone else's green qualifications.