(credit: United)
On Friday, United Airlines announced that its flights between Los Angeles International Airport and San Francisco International Airport will now be partly powered by a biofuel mix supplied by an LA-based company called AltAir Fuels.
United runs four or five flights between LAX and SFO every day, and it will fill these planes up with a combination of 30 percent biofuel and 70 percent traditional jet fuel, according to the Washington Post. The biofuel portion of the mix will be made with a range of biological source materials “from used cooking oil to algae,” the Post writes; it was developed with funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
The airline has agreed to purchase 15 million gallons of the mix over the next three years from AltAir. Still, the Los Angeles Times points out that United burned through 3.2 billion gallons of traditional jet fuel last year, so that 15 million gallons is just a proverbial drop in the jet fuel barrel.
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