Virgin Atlantic Complete First Biofuel Demonstration Flight

Virgin Atlantic yesterday completed the first biofuel demonstration flight in history with one of its Boeing 747 'jumbo' jets. The aircraft did not fly with completely biofuel however. The Boeing 747 has four fuel tanks three of which were 100% full of regular aviation fuel. The fourth tank was a mix of 80% regular aviation fuel and 20% biofuel. The flight took off from Heathrow Airport at 11.35 and landed at Amsterdam Schiphol Airport at 12.14.

The flight had five people onboard to evaluate the performance of the aircraft including Virgin Atlantic Captain Geoff Andreason. Virgin Atlantic have also confirmed that the Boeing 747 that was used had no modifications made to it to accept the new fuel mixture.

The biofuel that was used for this historic flight was in fact nothing but Babassu oil and coconut oil which worked flawlessly for the entire flight. This was a very important milestone in aviation and is now proof that biofuel is a realistic prospect for he future. The job now is to increase the quantity of biofuel in the aircraft to make them even more environmentally friendly however considering that the ammount of coconuts used just for this small percentage of ecofuel was 150,000 it means that coconut production would have to be radically upscaled to meet future ecofuel requirements.

Despite the promising flight it has drawn criticism for several areas including suggestions that the increase of coconut requirements would lead to significant de-forestation. It has also been mentioned that the Babassu oil that was also used would never be able to be supplied in significant enough quantities to meet the demand of aviation. Experts have suggested that the future may be algea which can be grown on water and would not lead to de-forestation however some argue that processing algea may create as much carbon dioxide as current aviation fuel burning.

Despite the criticisms Virgin Atlantic have gone some way to proving the validity of ecofuel and many airlines can now use this as a stepping stone to more environmentally friendly flying for the future.

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Published by: Jon Vickery