Projo Offbeat Blog

Vegetable oil may be great for cooking, and not so bad for pushing a little car to the corner market, but do we really want to rely on coconut oil to carry us across the ocean at 30,000 feet?

The airlines are beginning to experiment with biofuels to save money and reduce carbon emissions. And that scares me. You can get out and walk if your vegetable oil-fueled car stops running, but you've got bigger problems if your plane stalls.

Again proving that pilots are braver than the average working stiff, two pilots for Air New Zealand spent two hours yesterday testing whether something called jatropha oil could fly a Boeing 747-400 aircraft.

Granted, the jatropha oil was blended with jet fuel and used in just one of the plane's four engines, but I've got to wonder if these pilots felt the need to pack parachutes.

According to a New York Times' story, "Virgin Atlantic in February became the first airline to test a biofuel blend in a commercial aircraft, using a 20-percent mixture of coconut oil and babassu nut oil in one of its four engines."

"Two more airlines are to test their alternatives next month. Continental Airlines on Jan. 7 will conduct a test flight using a blend that includes algae and jatropha, the first biofuel test flight of a commercial airliner owned by a U.S. company.

"And Japan Airlines is planning a test flight Jan. 30 using a fuel based on the camelina oilseed."

Maybe I'm not as committed to the go-green effort as I'd like to think, but I sure hope these airlines do a lot more testing before they start running regular commercial flights on algae or babassu nut oil.

Even then, I might start packing a parachute in my carry-on.

 Tags  airlines biofuels vegetable oil

---