Qantas to charter Australia's first commercial flight powered by cooking oil

Wed, 03/28/2012 - 23:00 — Anonymous by CNNGo staff It's difficult to
believe that it's only been four years since Time Magazine ran the headline
"Can Airplanes Fly on Biofuel?". Now it seems that all airlines are
jumping on the biofuel train (excuse our mixed metaphors), whether it's for
the marketing factor (hey, we're writing about it), or because it's
perceived as the hottest green initiative right now. Case in point: Qantas is
the latest airline to launch a flight powered by cooking oil. Tickets are
currently on sale for Australia's first commercial biofuel flight, which is
slated for April 13 from Sydney to Adelaide, not from Melbourne to Adelaide
as some news agencies have been reporting.  The 300-seater Airbus 330 will
use U.S.-imported biofuel in one of its two engines -- the same cooking oil
that was previously used by Lufthansa in a six-month trial (the world's
first) during which 1,200 biofuel-flights were completed between Hamburg and
Frankfurt. read more