President Richard Branson said the aim of the flight was to show that the fuel could produce less carbon dioxide than normal jet fuels.

"This breakthrough will help Virgin Atlantic to fly its planes using clean fuel sooner than expected," he said.

"The demonstration flight will give us crucial knowledge that we can use to dramatically reduce our carbon footprint."

The Virgin flight followed a similar effort by Boeing earlier this month, in which a 747 had one unmodified engine running on a mixture of about 25% biofuel and the rest standard jet kerosene.