Today the first commercial flight to run solely on cooking oil landed in Lanzarote. The 232 passengers boarding the plane must of looked like hypnotized zombies following the scent of the hot fat like a chippie outside a gym.
The 14.25 Thomas Airways flight unsurpringly from Birmingham was originally scheduled for July 2011 but had to be postponed until now due to a delay in delivery as the suppliers are based in Holland. Bless the generous Dutch for helping us out, us fat bastards just can’t give up our chips here that easily!
Other airlines (like Virgin) have made these overseas bio-fuelled flights before in 2008. Although, ironically the pilots were just ridin’ solo. So technically boys it doesn’t count, sorry.
So is this the future of flying? Will Martha Stuart be encouraging us to keep the scrapings of our deep fat fryers? Not just yet apparently.
The potential 80% aviation emissions is restricted for now to this one off flight as there is a huge lack of supply. Yes, really. There’s a lack of waste cooking oil in the UK.
Although it is thought that Thomas Airways are in serious talks with MacDonalds, we guess until anything is settled we’ll just keep googling ‘cheap flights’ not ‘chip flights’.
By Rachel Trickett
