It's bad enough for some prop aircrafts to be referred to as being powered by rubber bands. Now the skeptics might begin having a dig at business aircraft flying on everything from cooking oil to liquefied algae.

With the civil aviation market under increasing pressure from increasing oil costs and ecological legislation, the race is on to discover viable options to conventional kerosene and these so far seem to come down to different types of biofuel.

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

Jatropha is a genus of roughly 175 succulent 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 dry spell and bugs, and produces seeds including 27-40% oil.

Recently, US aerospace giant Boeing, Brazilian aerial significant Embraer and the Sao Paulo state Research Support Foundation moved to perform research and development into the use of biofuels to power jet airliners. It was reported that Brazilian airlines Azul, Gol, TAM and Trip would serve as strategic consultants for the project.

The most current airline to begin experimenting with new fuels is the Alaska Air Group which has carried out 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 hazardous emissions by 10%.

One actually encouraging advancement has been the relocation far from biofuels which complete head on with food consumers thus preventing a cost spiral. Not so long ago, a rise in usage of biofuels in automobiles triggered a spike in maize rates as US farmers diverted too much 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 blessing indeed if some individuals ended up starving just to please somebody else's green qualifications.