Air transport is already a well-known transportation in assuring the need of worldwide social connection and commercial purposes. Nowadays huge demand on aviation fuel increases severe tense due to depletion of fossil fuel. Furthermore, the increases of greenhouse gas emission from the fossil fuel reduces the environment quality and human life. Hence, an attention towards alternative aviation fuel from renewable sources has become a priority as it could offer greener aviation. However alternative fuel must be compatible in comparison of the conventional fuel in terms of its physical properties such as viscosity, energy density, sustainability, affordability and availability. Those properties will affect spray characteristics and leads to combustion quality. Therefore, this study presents a review on the different alternative fuels and their compatibility in the aircraft engine. The importance of spray characteristic on the engine and different experimental approach to examine the spray characteristics of fuel particularly the penetration length, spray morphology, cone angle and atomization of the fuel also are presented. This work is beneficial in providing understanding on alternative fuels and spray atomization examination. © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd 2020.