For the first time yesterday, an Airbus A320 flew on biofuel – its energy supplied by 50% biofuel from the jatropha plant and 50% normal Jet A1 fuel. Importantly, the test flight took place in Brazil, using Brazilian-grown jatropha and with Brazil’s national carrier TAM Airlines. It was the first such test flight to take [...]

In December, we witnessed the first test flight of the Boeing 787, a new generation of super-efficient aircraft. The 787 test aircraft (ZA001 and ZA002) have now logged well over 100 hours of flight tests and are proving to be even more fuel-efficient than the designers thought. Well, on Monday another new Boeing, the 747-8, [...]

I thought I’d share with you a video that played during yesterday’s announcement of the formation of SkyEnergy by KLM. It explains very clearly the benefits of switching to biofuels. Here is the video:

I write from Amsterdam where technicians and flight crew from Dutch airline KLM are preparing one of their Boeing 747 aircraft for a landmark flight. When it takes off in four and a half hours at 1415 CET, it will be carrying not only a select group of around 40 politicians, technical experts and industry [...]

I wrote last week about the recent certification of gas to liquid fuel for use in commercial aircraft. Well, today we saw the first commerical flight using such fuel. In fact, Qatar Airways flight QR076 from London Gatwick to Doha was flown with a 50/50 mix of alternative fuel and normal jet fuel in each [...]

The latest GreenAir Online came out today, with two interesting articles. One reviews last week’s seminar hosted by The Royal Society in London and the aviation research team at Omega. The session looked at the “Non-C02 Impacts of Aviation” and the article gives a good outline of some of the latest research being done by [...]