#Qantas powers flight with cooking #oil

Fancy having the oil that fried your hot chips being then used to power your interstate flight? Qantas Airways does. And sooner rather than later, SMH reported.

Qantas chief executive Alan Joyce says finding a sustainably produced biofuel is an important step in confronting the major challenge of high fuel prices.

It also supports the aviation industry’s goal of being carbon neutral by 2020.

Mr Joyce says crude oil had risen from $US65 a barrel in 2006/07 to near $US125 a barrel today.

"The market view is that this price is likely to stay over $US100 per barrel in the medium term," Mr Joyce said at Sydney Airport on Friday, ahead of Qantas’s first commercial flight using biofuel.

"We need to get ready for a future that is not based on traditional jet fuel or frankly we don’t have a future."

When Qantas Airways’ QF1121 took off from Sydney just after 1010 AEST on Friday, it marked Australia’s first commercial flight using sustainably derived biofuel.

The fuel, made from used cooking oil and produced by Dutch firm SkyNRG, powered one engine of the Airbus A330 aircraft.

The airline has also been working with other firms on alternative sources of aviation jet fuel made from algae or household waste.

Qantas’s low-cost subsidiary Jetstar will use the same SkyNRG biofuel on a return trip between Melbourne and Hobart on April 19.

Virgin Australia had no immediate plans for one-off biofuel flights, preferring to focus on its two projects to develop commercially feasible supplies of biofuel at competitive prices.

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