NEW YORK (AP) - A Dutch airliner is flying from New York to Amsterdam on a fuel mix that includes leftover oil from frying Louisiana's Cajun food.

The KLM flights from Kennedy Airport are powered by a combination of 25 per cent recycled cooking oil and 75 per cent jet fuel.

After the first such flight Friday, the concept will be tested on 24 round-trip trans-Atlantic trips every Thursday for the next six months.

KLM executive Camiel Eurlings jokingly told the New York Post that "it smelled like fries" while the plane was being fuelled.

The waste oil from frying up crawfish, cracklins and other Cajun specialties is refined at a Louisiana plant, then trucked to JFK.

KLM says the cooking oil reduces polluting carbon emissions up to 80 per cent.