It's bad enough for some prop planes to be referred to as being powered by elastic band. Now the skeptics could start having a dig at commercial aircraft flying on whatever from cooking oil to melted algae.

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

Not remarkably, 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 limited biofuel usage in 2008. This was rapidly followed by Lufthansa and Air New Zealand who each used different blends of and bio derivatives including some from made from jatropha curcas which can grow in soil thought about too poor for growing mainstream foodstuffs.

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

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

Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aerial major Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation transferred to carry out research and development into the usage of biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airlines Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would serve as tactical specialists for the task.

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

One actually motivating development has been the relocation away from biofuels which compete head on with food consumers consequently avoiding a price spiral. Not so long back, a rise in use of biofuels in automobiles caused a spike in maize costs as US farmers diverted too much corn to fuel processing.

Hopefully in the future, airlines and vehicle drivers will focus biofuel intake on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a combined blessing certainly if some individuals wound up starving simply to satisfy another person's green credentials.