Fry while you fly? Dutch airline, KLM is using cooking oil to fuel flights from New York to Amsterdam.
You read that correctly. The oil that you use to cook things like French fries and chicken wings is being used to keep planes in the sky, according to the Daily Mail.
The oil that KLM Royal Dutch Airlines is using comes from Louisiana. The oil that is left over from frying spicy Cajun food is used on jets. Oil from crawfish and catfish is refined at a plant near Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
The oil fuel is then brought to New York's JFK Airport so that it can be used in the engines of the Boeing 777 aircraft that flies from New York to Amsterdam.
Cooking oil isn't the only fuel used. The KLM flight from New York to Amsterdam rely on 25 percent recycled cooking oil and 75 percent regular jet fuel.
"I was with the guy fueling the plane this morning, and he said it smelled like fries," KLM Executive, Camiel Eurlings told the New York Post.
The flight was tested on Friday and will depart every week for the next six months, relying on this fuel combination. There will be a total of 24 round-trip trans-Atlantic trips that will use this method.
According to pilots, the oil works like regular fuel and it doesn't require special treatment by flight and maintenance crews.
Jos Nijhuis, president of the Schiphol Group, a Dutch firm investing in the KLM flight series, was on board one of these flights and he didn't notice a difference.
"We came here on used cooking fat. The first question when we landed was, 'Was it smelly?' No, it wasn't smelly," he said, according to the Daily Mail.
KLM has been using cooking-oil0based fuel on passenger flights in Europe since September 2011 but this will be the first time they use it on trans-Atlantic flights.
The airline says the cooking oil is good for the environment as it reduces carbon emissions by up to 80 percent. However this fuel is more expensive as it costs three times more than regular jet fuel at $10 per gallon.
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
