Anyone who thinks that today's airliners are little more than carbon copies of the first airliners like the Comet and the Viscount to hit the skies in the 1950s would be exactly right. According to an article in New Scientist aerodynamics in civil aviation is pretty much a sunset activity. Current wisdom is that the current generation of turbo-fan engines is about as efficient as it's ever going to be.
New airframes would require radical research which is unlikely to be undertaken by the ultra conservative civil aviation industry and would only be undertaken in the interests of military aviation which clearly has other agendas than saving the planet.
Biofuels are unlikely to provide the answer either as like for like the volume of biofuel required to travel a given distance is much greater and the range of the aircraft would be much reduced.
Of course – there are innovative designs on the table – generally the work of dedicated amateurs without the resources to do anything about it. The aviation business is slowly waking up we are told, but don't hold your breath – it will probably be 30-40 years before we see anything really new.
In the meantime we're going to have to get used to flying a lot less.
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