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Jet fuel can actually be used in cars, but only in diesel engines. Kerosene jet fuel and diesel are actually similar enough to allow for cross-functionality and would provide a similar performance. Both are derived from crude oil, and both run their respective engines on combustion.

Jet fuel (there’s variants, but a very common one is known as Jet A) is really close to regular old diesel fuel. You can even run it straight in your diesel car or truck, though it doesn’t lubricate as well so if you do, you’d want to add some sort of lubrication additive.

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You can put a match out in Jet A at room temperature so it can’t possibly explode inside an aircraft fuel tank. At room temperature, a combustible liquid fuel has enough heat capacity to absorb all the energy and extinguish a small match flame without raising the fuel surface temperature above the fire or flash point.

The diesel engine does not use a spark plug, instead using the sheer heat of compression to ignite the fuel. Diesel engines compress the air within the combustion chamber by many times the compression rate used within a gasoline engine.

As of Monday afternoon, Jet-A is selling to corporate jets for an average of $5.21 per gallon. (Fuel is usually more expensive on the coasts and cheaper in the Midwest.) Because the cost of Jet-A closely tracks the price of a barrel of oil, fuel costs for private jets have quadrupled since 2000.

Seats to fill A 747 can seat 380 to 560 people, depending on how an airline sets it up. A full one is a moneymaker. But an airline that can’t fill all the seats has to spread the cost of 63,000 gallons of jet fuel — roughly $200,000 — among fewer passengers. The jets also are too big for most markets.