Jet engines run on jet fuel which is basically the same thing as diesel fuel you can buy at gas stations. The question isn’t that far off.
Just a nitpick, but Jet A (which the vast majority of jet aircraft run on) is kerosene, not diesel.
Diesel fuel, kerosene, home heating oil, and Jet A are essentially the same thing except for additives and the way they are treated for tax purposes. They are plenty close enough to ask about costs for an individual versus an airline.
Hmmm. I can’t find this response which I thought I posted earlier.
My post wasn’t intended to disparage the 747’s fuel economy. And I agree that the airlines load factor is much better than that of automobiles.
And I certainly didn’t interpret it that way. In fact you made the essential point: a full 747 provides remarkably fuel-efficient transportation.
Southwest and Alaska Airlines both bought into long-term contracts under a system known as hedging. Scroll a bit more than halfway down on this Congressional House report on Commercial Jet Fuel Supply: Impact and Cost on the U.S Airline Industry. However, both airlines will lose the contract advantage beginning in 2008. Buy your cheap tickets and fly now!
City or Highway?
Highway. Very high way.
You can run any pre-1985 diesel passenger car or truck I can think of on kerosene all day long.
I remember occasionally putting kerosene into the tank of a “deuce and a half”, or 2 1/2 ton cargo truck, that we had in the Army. The mechanics used to say a deuce and a half could run on Pepsi-Cola, but I think that was a slight exaggeration. They ordinarily ran on JP8, which was basically deisel fuel. By the way, I think the various kinds of JP fuel used in the Army were different ratings of jet fuel. So yeah, jet fuel is deisel essentially, in my estimation.
So could you run a 747 on biodiesel?
Yes, with a little twiddling of the fuel controls, and the right additives, but those are negotiable in a pinch. Jet fuel is kerosene (paraffin to Brits) is #2 heating oil, essentially. “JP” is a military prefix for “Jet Propulsion” - the US military uses JP-5 for everything, and calls commercial “Jet-A” fuel “JP-8” instead.
You can run a gas turbine engine on almost anything, really, just pump the BTU’s in at the right rate, and be careful with starting with low-flash fuels. US military helicopters are qualified to run on ordinary gasoline by simply moving a lever on the engine, for instance.
Really? I never heard that. Is that a Huey thing? The Army always always called the fuel “JP-8”, with mumblings that JP-4 was too hazardous. Tanks, Humvees, and helicopters all ran on the same stuff. JP-5 is equivalent to JET A, and JP-8 is equivalent to JET A-1. It ain’t cheap, nohow. Clear as moonshine.
One of the bragging points of the M1 Abrams tanks (and one of the intended design specs) was that it could run on just about any sort of fuel you could find for it, short of wood and coal. Diesel, jet fuel, or gasoline I think were the three choices. If this is a trait of gas turbines in general, then there is a class of US Navy destroyer that can operate similarly.
That said, the Abrams’ built in smoke generators only work if it’s burning diesel, IIRC. That might have to do with how the generators themselves work rather than any particular trait of the fuel (ie: gasoline might just cause the tank to emit balls of fire from the smoke generators, having an effect roughly opposite to that intended)
Nothing to contribute - merely to say thank you to everyone who posted in this thread. It was like reading a posting on Wikipedia! 
I don’t know about a 747, but I know a C-208 Caravan burns about a gallon a minute.
Blackhawk too.
JP-4 does have a slightly higher heating value (energy content per unit weight), reducing fuel burn in mass per hour, but it has a higher vapor pressure and lower flashpoint. USAF only recently abandoned it in favor of JP-5, which the Navy always used due to its greater shipboard safety. But neither is any big deal safetywise compared to gasoline - you can drop a lit match into either one, or kerosene, and it will just quench.
The diesel mobile refueling trucks at BWI airport were run on Jet A for years, until the EPA stepped in and said we had to start using diesel fuel.
Also, there was a comment about airplanes measuring fuel in pounds rather than gallons because of weight and balance issues. There’s also the expansion and contraction factor. 15,000 pounds of fuel at 30,000 feet is not the same amount of gallons of fuel as it is on the Arizona desert, but it’s the same weight.
For the 747, it’s fairly close to a gallon a second.
The diesel engines now starting to appear in the US (they’re common in Europe) are marketed as being able to burn jet fuel. But the EPA doesn’t regulate aircraft the way they do ground vehicles.