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Virgin Atlantic does test flight with biofuel in jumbo jet

Monday 25 Feb 2008 12:38am

The world's first commercial biofuel flight happened yesterday from London Heathrow to Amsterdam. Virgin Atlantic flew the aircraft to show how biofuel can produce less carbon-dioxide than normal jet fuels. Richard Branson, president of Virgin Atlantic said that "this breakthrough will help Virgin Atlantic to fly its planes using clean fuel sooner than expected". The data from the flight is expected to take weeks to fully analyze where the aircraft ran one of its 4 engines completely on biofuel - a mixture of coconut and babassu oil. An airline analyst said [quote] "It's great that somebody like Richard is willing to put some of his billions into an experiment aimed at reducing the climate change impact of aviation. . . . But there are a lot of unanswered questions about the usefulness of biofuels in the battle against global warming". Many airlines are jumping on the environmental bandwagon and trying to reduce their carbon footprints. Methods being looked at are changing fuels, making engines more fuel efficient and even down to changing how planes land and take-off. Aircraft engines can generate three times as much CO2 emissions than the fuel burnt. The noise pollution and emissions reduce air quality that contributes to global warming. The move by Virgin Atlantic was welcomed by groups who criticise airlines were generating as much as 3% of the total greenhouse gas emissions within the EK.

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