Alaska Airlines also brings biofuels to commercial runways

Since quite a few of you read the short item here earlier this week about the first commercial passenger flight by United Airlines of an aircraft running (at least partially) on algae-derived biofuel, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that rival carrier Alaska Airlines is actually running 75 similar biofuel-powered flights over the next several weeks.

The airline is running those select flights between Seattle and two other cities, Washington, D.C., and Portland, Ore. The biofuel used for its flights is about 20 percent of the fuel blend for the planes, and it was made from cooking oil. The fuel was supplied by SkyNRG, which is an aviation biofuels broker. It was produced by Dynamic Fuels, which has a facility in Geismar, La.

Alaska Air Group estimates that the use of biofuels will reduced the emissions associated with the flights by about 10 percent. If the airline switched entirely to a biofuel-blend approach, the annual savings would be the equivalent of taking 64,000 cars off the road each year, according to the airline's estimates.