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

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

Not remarkably, the first trials of alternative fuel were started by British air travel pioneer, 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 various 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 foodstuffs.

Jatropha is a genus of around 175 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 very best candidates for future biodiesel production. It is resistant to drought and bugs, and produces seeds containing 27-40% oil.

Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aerial major Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation relocated to bring out research and development into using biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airline companies Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would function as strategic experts for the job.

The most recent airline to start exploring with new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has performed internal US flights using a blend of 80 % petroleum based fuel and 20% biofuel made from cooking oil. This mix, it is declared, can cut hazardous emissions by 10%.

One really encouraging development has actually been the move away from biofuels which contend head on with food customers thus preventing a price spiral. Not so long earlier, a rise in usage of biofuels in cars caused a spike in maize rates as US farmers diverted excessive corn to fuel processing.

Hopefully in the future, airline companies and drivers will focus biofuel consumption on non-food sources such as jatropha and algae. It would be a combined true blessing certainly if some individuals ended up starving just to satisfy somebody else's green credentials.