Well, it pretty much goes without saying that air travel isn’t exactly the best thing for the environment. While some airports are doing what they can to cut pollution, some airlines are vowing to cut emissions, and you the passenger can offset your travel, flying is still a dirty business. However, as of this Monday, perhaps it’s just gotten slightly cleaner. For the first time in history, a passenger airline flight was powered entirely by natural gas.

A flight from London to Qatar used only natural gas on its six-hour trip yesterday, using an Airbus plane that can handle things like biofuels. Some details for you, courtesy of Reuters:

Shell developed and produced the 50-50 blend of synthetic Gas to Liquids (GTL) kerosene and conventional oil-based kerosene fuel used in Qatar Airways’ Airbus A340-800 aircraft powered by a Rolls-Royce Trent 556 engine.

I hear the Trent 556 is the Rolls-Royce of airplane engines. Anyhow, we still have to remember that these airplanes are still burning fuel, though from alternative biomass sources instead of the normal fossil fuels. As well, this alternative fuel burns “with lower sulphur [sic] dioxide and particulate emissions, which should help improve local air quality at busy airports.” Better than nothing, eh? My best guess is that airplanes will be relying on fuel for quite some time, so the fact that this is the first step in what Airbus is hoping will mean that by 2030, up to 30 percent of jet fuel will be alternative, the skies can be just a little bit cleaner.

photo credit: pedrosimoes7’s flickr photostream/Creative Commons