Very soon, aviation industry is going to be environmentally friendly and a revolution is about to come. The day is not far when you will be boarding a flight being fueled by some kind of cooking oil and Thomson Airways could be one of the pioneers in this field. A flight of the airways is scheduled to leave for Spain, which will use cooking oil as a fuel.
The green day in the history of aviation industry will be July 28, 2011. Once Thomson Airways gets the safety clearances, the flight will take off on 28 July from Birmingham to Palma, Mallorca. If everything goes well, then this will become a regular feature at the airways. Though the cooking oil fuel is far more expensive then regular jet fuels, the company has taken the initiative as an effort towards curbing down the carbon emissions, causing air pollution and subsequent global warming. If the company makes it a regular feature across entire fleet then in a period of next 4 years the company will be able to reduce carbon emissions by 6 percent.
After successful completion of the maiden flight, there will be regular flights operating on the same route on weekly basis. During winters, the route will be slightly changed and the flighted will be routed on Birmingham – Alicante route. The cooking oil based fuel is basically a mixture of fatty acids from cooking oil and jet fuel mixed in equal proportions. This ‘green fuel’ will be supplied to Thomson Airways by a Dutch company names SkyNRG.
Though in it’s nascent stage, the experiment has garnered both supporters and opponents. In the galaxy of supporters their are big names like the government and the aviation ministry. The aviation minister has supported the idea and has shown keenness in its execution.She was quoted as saying that the government supports such experiments which are instrumental in reducing the carbon emissions and hence can delay the climatic changes. On the contrary, some activists have opposed the idea saying that it is not a viable idea since use of food crops like Palm oil is not fair, as the land could be used to feed more people.
A similar experiment has been carried out successfully by a Dutch airline KLM also. The KLM flight flew more than 150 passengers from Amsterdam to Paris, using the same green fuel recently but the distance in terms of kilometers was only half as Amsterdam – Paris route is 748 kms whereas Birmingham – Palma route is approximately 1475 kms. So if the Thomson experiment goes well, we can hope that in future longer route flights can safely use the green fuel.
Via: Daily Mail
