Qatar Airways plane first to fly on natural gas fuel

FUEL FIRST: Qatar Airways has completed the first flight fuelled by natural gas.

Qatar Airways has made history by being the first airline to power a flight on a fuel made of natural gas.

Qatar, the world’s largest natural gas producer, saw its national carrier fly a passenger plane from London Gatwick to Doha on Monday.

The flight was the latest step in more than two years of scientific work carried out by a consortium consisting of Airbus, Qatar Airways, Qatar Petroleum, Qatar Science and Technology Park, Rolls-Royce, Shell and WOQOD into the benefits of using GTL Jet Fuel to power commercial aircraft, the paper reported.

“This milestone flight is the first step in making this alternative fuel available to airlines,” Akbar Al Baker, Qatar Airways CEO told the paper.

Shell developed and produced the 50-50 blend of synthetic Gas-to-Liquids (GTL) kerosene and conventional oil-based kerosene fuel, The Peninsula reported on Tuesday.

Qatar is set to become the world’s leading producer of GTL kerosene when it is put into commercial production from 2012 at Pearl GTL, Ras Laffan Industrial City.

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