French fries or as we call them in Australia – hot chips – are one of my favourite things to eat. After school we used to buy bags of them to eat on the way home, drenched in salt and vinegar. Absolutely delicious! While they are not on my daily food list any longer I still enjoy having them from time to time.

They are a popular food in many countries, being sold in restaurants as a common side dish. For a food so popular, it is amazing that they are not generally on airline menus.

Now Serving French Fries!

It appears very few carriers offer french fries on their menu. Brussels Airlines started serving them on flights of over two hours from 1 July 2016 and they come with ketchup and mayonnaise. Ryanair also offer hot chips for purchase on board their flights in Europe.

It appears Etihad offer Oven-Baked French Fries as a side dish in First Class, which is quite unexpected and fun. The only other airline I can find that serves them is a small Dutch airline called Corendon.

Why No Fries?

Considering how innocuous and popular they are, I do wonder why they don’t feature on board more airlines. Oven cooked french fries have been been available in supermarkets forever so you would expect them to be served on flights. Is it a space issue perhaps? They are quite bulky so that could make sense.

The other alternative is storage. Oven cooked chips from a supermarket come frozen while airline food arrives on board chilled. Perhaps they don’t store well being chilled and then reheated. I’d be curious to find out the real reason behind this.

Overall Thoughts

As a fan of fries with all the trimmings, I’ve often wondered why they’re not served on board. I certainly won’t be going out of my way to fly Brussels Airlines just to try their fries but I would like to try them at 35,000 feet someday to see if they taste the same as they do on the ground.

When an airline goes full on and serves sweet potato fries on board, I’ll be in heaven! Well, it is fun to dream! Thank you for reading and if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.

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Featured image via Brussels Airlines.