BISMARCK, N.D. (KXNET) — If you’ve flown in the past few years, you may have been sitting a bit longer waiting for workers to ‘de-ice’ the plane, but after a costly investment, this may not necessarily need to be the case in North Dakota.

Bismarck Airport workers recently obtained approval from the City Commission to accept a bid to order the deicing chemical they’ll use on the runways this winter — which comes from a company in Missoula, MT, and costs just over $5 a gallon.

The airport has to pay this luxury price because the solution in question uses use potassium formate, which is a chemical that won’t cause damage or deterioration to jets.

“It’s very expensive,” Bismarck airport director Greg Haug said. “You use it sparingly, but there are times when you absolutely have to. You need it in your tool kit. We also have pellets as well — deicing pellets we can throw out to cut through freezing rain. We need to cut through that so we can broom it off.”

Right now, the airport has a capacity of 16,000 gallons of deicer, but Haug says that thanks to a new building under construction, they’re increasing their capacity to 20,000 gallons.