Some of you may remember the song "Golden Green" by indie band the Wonderstuff, most of you won't. It was part of my record (yes record) collection quite a few years ago. The important thing here is the title, because it strikes me that despite being an oxymoron if you do discover something that is brilliantly green (in the planet saving sense) then it will be worth its weight in gold.

So what has this got to do with the travel industry? Although it seems to have crept under the radar, Thomson Airways have announced that they're going to test a commercial flight with a blend of normal airline fuel and biofuel.

The airlines are all keen to reduce their fuel spend and emissions. There is already testing underway on algae, which has enegy potential. That would literally be a green solution! It's rumoured that KLM, Lufthansa, Virgin, BA, Air New Zealand and no doubt many others are looking at the new technologies. It's not surprising if you consider the cost of fuel. For example, in 2008 BA expected its fuel bill to exceeed £3billion. That was before the cost of fuel went up, so there is a massive commitment to save costs.

I'm hopeful that as part of the cost saving measures that the airlines don't start to cut anything else. I have heard anecdotal evidence of cutbacks on airlines leading to lower standards and that will inevitably lead to holiday complaints and even holiday compensation claims for ruined holidays. We will have to see if there is an increase in complaints that we receive?

What is Biofuel?

The biofuel solution is waste cooking oil, re-enginered in Holland. European airline KLM undertook their own testing this week and flew 171 people from Amsterdam to Paris. I have no idea if those 171 people knew that they were being flown on an aircraft being kept in the air by chip fat? I doubt it.

Thomson , who are owned by tour operator TUI will be using the fuel to fly on one or two of the routes from Birmingham from September and will be rolling it out further if they can.

I was a bit concerned that we would run out of oil, but wikipedia tells me that we use 110 million tonnes per year, so that must produce a reasonable amount of waste. To put that in context, Europe and the US combined use 490 million tonnes of normal diesel. On that basis, it's worthwhile using it, but perhaps we should continue to eat unhealthily otherwise we might not have enough fuel to go in holiday? The downside is if we make the oil just for the fuel, that will put a huge squeeze on the world food supplies.

The good thing is that the travel industry are trying to innovate, so lets hope it works and they can also drive up the standards to keep those holiday claims to a minimum.