Bill Ayer

Greened for takeoff

I'm standing on the concourse watching an Alaska Airlines 737 jet landing in poor weather at Washington DC's Reagan National Airport.

Flight four from Seattle is "greener" than others that touch down here.

It's engines are powered, in part, by a sustainable biofuel. Twenty per cent is used cooking oil, 80 per cent traditional aviation fuel.

Alaska's CEO Bill Ayer, says: "The engine operates exactly the same. All of the parameters, everything that we measure technically about engine performance is identical."

Alaska Airlines says if all its aircraft were powered this way for one year it'd be like taking 64,000 cars off the road.

Other carriers are testing green fuels too.