Sustainable flight

Continental Airlines has used a sustainable biofuel to power a commercial aircraft for the first time ever in North America.

The demonstration flight - which was conducted in partnership with Boeing, GE Aviation/CFM International, and Honeywell’s UOP - marks the first sustainable biofuel demonstration flight by a commercial carrier using a twin-engined aircraft, a Boeing 737-800 powered by CFM International CFM56-7B engines.

The biofuel blend included components derived from algae and jatropha plants.

The algae oil was provided by Sapphire Energy, and the jatropha oil by Terasol Energy.

Continental’s Boeing 737-800 departed from and returned to Houston’s Bush Intercontinental Airport, operating under a specially issued ‘Experimental’  aircraft type certificate, and carried no passengers.

During the flight, which lasted approximately two hours, Continental test pilots engaged the aircraft in a number of flight manoeuvres, such as mid-flight engine shutdown and re-start, and power accelerations and decelerations.

The biofuel blend, which consists of 50 per cent biologically derived fuel and 50 per cent traditional jet fuel, was used to power one of the aircraft’s engines, while the other operated on traditional jet fuel, allowing Continental to compare performance between the biofuel blend and traditional fuel.