You've been able to fly a plane with unleaded fuel for decades. See every major airline burning jet fuel.
It won't stop the use of leaded fuel until the FAA bans it, which should have happened decades ago. Your airplane can't fly without unleaded fuel? Cool! You can stare at it in the hangar!
There has recently been some real progress in this front, with the FAA approving unleaded fuel in about 600 engine models. Basically, aviators have been waiting a long time for the government to stop forcing them to use leaded fuel.
No. Unleaded aviation fuels have been available forever. That certification helps people convert obsolete aircraft to unleaded at lower cost, a thing which should be a non-goal of national policy. The federal government should outlaw leaded aviation fuels immediately and let the hobby aviation community figure out how to proceed from there.
Jet fuel is unleaded. It’s also pretty close to diesel, and some aircraft manufacturers have diesel piston engines that can use JetA. The leaded culprit is AVGas aka 100LL which we use in piston general aviation aircraft.
The FAA certification process is the largest limiting factor for bringing an unleaded fuel to the market. There are about 9 different formulations of unleaded fuels flying in experimental aircraft right now. I have my own "favorite", but it's unclear when, if ever, that will be available for sale to non-experimental aircraft.
The magazine article you reference says that 70% of aircraft could use (a lower octane) unleaded fuel available today. That's true, but paints an incomplete picture. That's 70% by aircraft, not 70% by flight hours or fuel consumed.
Cape Air and similar and other turbocharged piston aircraft are the ones that can't use the available unleaded "mogas". Those are also the aircraft that fly the most hours and thereby use the most fuel. Fixing the 172s and Cherokees doesn't move the needle much on TEL emissions.
I want to get rid of the lead from my aviation fuel, both for environmental reasons and for practical reasons. (Practically, it's a pain to deal with on the supply chain side, is expensive, there's only one manufacturer of TEL worldwide, it tends to gunk and foul plugs, etc.)
The FAA is the regulatory body that is presiding over this, much more than the EPA. End running the FAA to get the EPA to make another "lead is bad" proclamation won't do any good, IMO.
My engines can't burn any available and certified unleaded fuel.
Jets [and turboprops] don’t use leaded fuel. Many of the small, piston-engined airplanes do, but because current FAA regulation forces them to, not because of a lack of regulation.
> You've been able to fly a plane with unleaded fuel for decades. See every major airline burning jet fuel.
Jet engines are completely different from the piston engines you'll find in general aviation (sans choppers, which mostly run on jet engines).
Piston engines need leaded fuel for lubrication as well as knock resistance, and deviating from the original certification of the engine/plane requires a type-specific certification - every model of plane you want to fly that was certified with 100LL AvGas needs to be separately tested if it can fly safely with lead-free AvGas [1].
And at leasy until very recently, leaded kerosene. Long after leaded fuel has been banned for regular (car-driving) people due to it's known disastrous health effects.
The issue with unleaded fuel is that the goal is to make it a drop-in replacement on all engines that currently use AVGAS100LL, which is the only remaining leaded fuel in large use (a lot of small planes can actually fly on unleaded aviation fuels and there are some available, it's just 100LL is "default" fuel when thinking of piston engines). So they have to certify that if you swap the fuel, preferably without any modifications, then it's safe to fly.
Battery powered aircraft go through normal certification process for a new design.
We can ban it for newer aircraft; or at least discourage it in the same way that happened with cars. That way, the market will do the rest and eventually it will be quite hard to find leaded fuel.
From an environmental point of view, a handful of historical planes still burning the stuff when they fly occasionally should not be a huge issue.
The DC3 is awesome. A few years ago, they flew a few C47s (the military version of the DC3) to Normandy that saw service in WW II. Amazing machines. Looks like a lot of fun to fly them as well.
Exactly. The idea that you can't make an engine that runs on unleaded is rediculous. Airliners for example don't use leaded.
Yes, planes 50 years ago -> maybe those were designed for leaded. But the idea that we are selling new planes, today, that "only" run on leaded gas is a farce and goes to show how seriously aviation is taking the transition away from leaded gas (which has been delayed as I've said decades).
No, commercial airplanes all use unleaded jet fuel. But the small, 2 and 4 seater general aviation planes you see are almost all using 60-year old engine designs that run on leaded fuel because the FAA doesn't want to devote time to approving new engines for general aviation.
DC-3's burn leaded gasoline. Older piston aircraft like the DC-3 are why we can't simply ban leaded gasoline in aviation. There are just too many around in active use doing important things.
I was never clear on why leaded avgas wasn't banned long ago. I know I've run across information on the internet about aircraft engines that can run on unleaded.
It won't stop the use of leaded fuel until the FAA bans it, which should have happened decades ago. Your airplane can't fly without unleaded fuel? Cool! You can stare at it in the hangar!
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