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

With the civil aviation market under increasing pressure from increasing oil rates and environmental legislation, the race is on to find viable options to traditional kerosene and these up until now seem to boil down to different kinds of biofuel.

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

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

In 2007 Goldman Sachs cited Jatropha curcas as one of the very best prospects for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to drought and insects, and produces seeds consisting of 27-40% oil.

Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aeronautical significant Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support to perform research and advancement into using biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airlines Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would serve as tactical experts for the project.

The most current airline to begin try out new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has performed internal US flights using a mix of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mix, it is claimed, can cut damaging emissions by 10%.

One actually motivating advancement has been the move far from biofuels which complete head on with food customers thereby preventing a cost spiral. Not so long earlier, a rise in use of biofuels in cars triggered a spike in maize rates as US farmers diverted excessive corn to fuel processing.

Hopefully in the future, airlines and drivers will focus biofuel intake on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a blended blessing certainly if some people ended up starving just to please somebody else's green credentials.