Airline Launches First On-Tap Draught Beer Service

KLM Royal Dutch Airlines is preparing to serve draft beer on flights, making it the first airline to do so. The question is, why did it take so long?

Safety concerns and design of a special keg have both been hurdles in the quest for the mile-high pour, but Heineken has solved the riddle, and will be the beer of choice for KLM.

“We are always looking for typical Dutch products to set us apart from other companies,” KLM in-flight services vice president Miriam Kartman said. “Heineken is our beer partner for many years, and we both know that customers rate a beer from draft higher than out of a can."

The man who solved the problem of how to safely fit a draft system on a plane was Heineken’s Edwin Griffioen. Space and regulations on C02 systems both presented significant problems.

“Because the air pressure is so much lower in an aeroplane than at sea level, a traditional beer tap will not work as it will only dispense a huge amount of foam,” he said. “We do have dispensers that work on air pressure, but these were too big to fit in a plane.It was one big jigsaw puzzle, as the keg of beer, the cooling system and the air pressure compressor all had to fit in an airline catering trolley.In the end we had to leave out one of those pieces to make it all fit, so with pain in our hearts we had to leave the cooling behind.”

The solution is simply to cool them before the flight. Each plane will carry four kegs, which may really put a new face on a transatlantic red-eye. 

“We managed to set the diameter of the tap and the air pressure to exactly the right combination, which delivers at 36,000 feet exactly the same beer as you would get on the ground," Griffioen said.

When beer is concerned, human ingenuity knows no bounds.