Before the approval of the first alternative jet fuels, demonstration flights had already been performed by a number of airlines. The first flight took place in February 2008 when a Boeing 747 from Virgin Atlantic flew from London to Amsterdam using a 20% blend of biofuel, made of coconut and babassu oil, to supply one of its engines. A total of nine demonstration flights using biofuels made from various vegetable oils was performed by July 2011 (three flights were also performed with Fischer-Tropsch Gas-to-Liquid, GTL, as a surrogate of Biomass-to-Liquid, BTL, as the Fischer-Tropsch process was still under development for biomass). They demonstrated the performance and the safety of the fuels. In addition, numerous military aircraft flights were performed by the U.S. Air Force that contributed to the validation of alternative jet fuels.
Following the approval of HEFA in July 2011, commercial flights developed, proving the safety and innocuousness of regular use of alternative fuels and demonstrating the interest and engagement of airlines. A number of airlines achieved a series of scheduled flights over a period of time, such as Thomson Airways (daily flight over six weeks in 2012), Alaska Airlines (75 scheduled flights) or Lufthansa that achieved 1,200 flights from Hamburg to Frankfurt, over a six months period, with a regular monitoring of the aircraft engines in order to evaluate the potential long term effects of using alternative fuels. As of June 2012, more than 1,500 flights had been performed on biojet fuels. More recently, KLM performed weekly intercontinental flights on biofuels from New York to Amsterdam over 26 weeks.
As of July 2016, more than 2,500 flights have been performed on biojet fuels. In recent years, airlines, fuel providers, and airports have increasingly been working together to use alternative fuels in the aviation industry.
To learn more about on-going initiatives, see our Initiatives and Projects page
here.
To learn more about recent implementation and commercial operations, see our News and Activities page
here.
To watch a live feed of flights currently operating on biofuels, return to our front page
here.
