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German airline Lufthansa will blend biofuels with the customary kerosene on commercial flights by 2012, according to its chairman and chief executive, Wolfgang Mayrhuber.

Instead of conducting individual test flights, the airline plans to phase in biofuel on certain routes to gather more extensive data on the effects of prolonged usage. A spokesman for the carrier confirmed that a more detailed schedule for the fuel's introduction would be released by the end of the year.

The pledge comes after KLM, a subsidiary of Air France and one of Lufthansa's main competitors, last year became the first airline to test biofuel in a passenger plane on a 90 minute flight over the Netherlands. KLM has also set an earlier target of 2011 for introducing biofuels on passenger planes.

Green campaigners had cause for cheer as Peter Hartman, chief executive at KLM, said the biofuel used on last year's flight reduced CO2 emissions by up to 80 per cent compared to traditional kerosene.

Neither company has specified what proportion of greener fuels would be used on the first commercial flights although a KLM spokeswoman revealed that test flights had taken place in which all four engines were running exclusively on biofuels.

With the EU set to extend its Emissions Trading System - a programme which caps European nations' use of fossil fuels and charges organisations for allowances to exceed their quota - to airlines from 2012, there are financial incentives to make the transition to alternative fuels.

'First, we are hoping to get some resource security, and second, we hope that we will have some advantages in our costs for emissions trading,' said Mayrhuber at a golden anniversary event celebrating 50 years of partnership between Boeing and Lufthansa.

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