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

With the civil air travel industry under increasing pressure from rising oil costs and ecological legislation, the race is on to find feasible alternatives to standard kerosene and these up until now appear to boil down to different kinds of biofuel.

Not remarkably, the first trials of alternative fuel were initiated by British air travel leader, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic started London to Amsterdam flights with limited biofuel use in 2008. This was quickly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each used different blends of routine fuel and bio derivatives consisting of some from made from jatropha curcas which can grow in soil considered too bad for growing mainstream foods.

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 curcas as one of the very best prospects for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to dry spell and pests, and produces seeds containing 27-40% oil.

Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aeronautical major Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation moved to perform research and development into making use of biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airline companies Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would function as strategic consultants for the job.

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

One really encouraging advancement has actually been the relocation far from biofuels which contend head on with food customers therefore preventing a cost spiral. Not so long back, a rise in use of biofuels in automobiles triggered a spike in maize costs as US farmers diverted too much corn to fuel processing.

Hopefully in the future, airline companies and drivers will focus biofuel intake on non-food sources such as jatropha curcas and algae. It would be a mixed true blessing indeed if some people wound up starving just to satisfy someone else's green credentials.