Boeing, Air China and PetroChina schedule second biofuel flight test

Stephen Emmert, Boeing’s regional director of the biofuel strategy team for China and North America, announced that Boeing Company, Air China and Petro China will conduct a second test flight partially powered by plant oil. The test is scheduled for the third quarter of this year and will most likely be conducted on a Trans-Pacific trip, which is longer than the one-hour test flight conducted in China last October. The project is aimed at proving that biofuel from China works. As in the previous flight test, biofuel produced by PetroChina from locally grown jatropha will be used. “China has a need (for cleaner fuels) like the rest of the world that is very real,” said Marc Allen, Boeing’s head of operations in China. “They have (economic) scale that many parts of the world cannot match. And they have fast growing technological capability that will allow them to be on the forefront on these initiatives,” he added. (June 12, 2012)