It's bad enough for some propeller airplanes to be referred to as being powered by elastic band. Now the skeptics might begin having a dig at industrial airplane flying on whatever from cooking oil to liquefied algae.

With the civil air travel market under increasing pressure from increasing oil prices and environmental legislation, the race is on to discover practical alternatives to standard kerosene and these up until now seem to boil down to numerous kinds of biofuel.

Not surprisingly, the very first trials of alternative fuel were started by British aviation leader, Sir Richard Branson, whose Virgin Atlantic started London to Amsterdam flights with restricted 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 which can grow in soil considered too bad for growing mainstream foods items.

jatropha curcas 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 pointed out Jatropha curcas as one of the best candidates for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to dry spell and pests, and produces seeds consisting of 27-40% oil.

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

The newest airline to start exploring with 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 actually has been the move far from biofuels which complete head on with food customers therefore avoiding a price spiral. Not so long earlier, a rise 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 blended true blessing certainly if some people wound up starving just to satisfy someone else's green credentials.