yeah, that's always the threat - "following basic environmental safety rules will kill ____". but just because you say it, doesn't make it true.
GA flying is important for a lot of industry, and a lot of remote communities. it might have taken some work, but they could have found a way to use unleaded fuel in airplanes in fewer than 50 years.
That's like asking why the gas-fired-appliance industry is doomed if natural gas is outlawed. Piston GA has been running on leaded gas, and the unleaded aviation gas that exists is only certified for something like 35% of the piston fleet.
But that's not the only major problem. GA suffers from a shrinking pilot population, with cost being a huge hurdle for both training and operation of planes. Replacing one niche fuel with another isn't going to help.
The industry should've tackled this issue decades ago. The writing was on the wall for leaded gas in the '70s. Yes, it is a technical challenge, but after this much time I find it hard to believe it wouldn't have been solved with enough motivation and a regulatory regime that fostered a solution.
Alright, here we go yet again with the "leaded gas from GA is going to kill us all!" scare mongering.
First, the GA fleet worldwide uses 500 tons of lead per year. Compared to 5,000,000 tons when leaded car gas was in use. That's a 99% reduction in lead pollution, so let's not be so dramatic and claim that flying a piston GA plane is "evil" and that we're all going to die from it and how it's poisoning low income communities in particular. Last I checked there are many middle and upper middle class neighborhoods that exist near regional airports. I know this all too well because those are the same NIMBYs that move in next to an airport that has existed there for the past century and then try to close it because of noise complaints.
Second, since I'm sure you don't know, most GA planes can fly perfectly fine on unleaded gas. Some engines are diesel and some burn Jet A (the same as airliners), none of which have lead. Some small trainer aircraft are electric now too.
Third, unleaded G100UL exists, is certified, and is actively being rolled out. If only we could get the FAA to stop doing what they always do, which is move as slow as glaciers about anything related to GA. I'm not going to defend leaded gas, we all want to see it gone if for nothing else than to take away this ridiculous talking point from the ignorant. It should have been done 50 years ago if the FAA wasn't boneheaded, but I'm also not going to loose sleep over burning a minuscule amount of lead when natural lead sources and lead pipes/paint still exist in the world.
By the way, my home water source is a well 250ft from the end of a runway. I've had lab tests run on it for lead and it's well below the EPA limit. I put my health where my mouth is, I look forward to the day when it's all unleaded fuel being burned but until then it's not something that concerns me.
Unfortunately lead in fuel is used as an excuse to shut down airports. Lead, noise, "safety..." all the red herrings used by local politicans and the developers who own them, along with small-time (or big-time) land speculators to call for airport closures.
The fact remains that unless piston planes can run on ACTUAL car gas (which means gasohol) in the foreseeable future, GA is probably doomed. Or we can stop putting methanol in gas... which is also an excellent idea.
Also GA is, in the end, a relatively small-scale activity, so leaded avgas isn't much of a public health hazard like leaded automotive gas was back in the day. More of an occupational hazard for people working on and flying those planes, and higher maintenance requirement on the engines.
Hopefully they can manage to roll out G100UL at scale so 100LL can finally die. And then that final TEL plant on the planet can be shut down for good.
We have to weigh these benefits to (piston-powered) general aviation (mostly a hobby?) against toxifying the environment.
Frankly I don't think piston-powered GA is vital enough to our economy/society to justify such a long grace period on removing the leaded fuel.
If our Cessnas can't climb quite as fast or fly quite as far - that seems a very reasonable cost for removing a known potent neurotoxin from the environment.
>General aviation (small planes) still use 100LL (low-lead) fuel.
In vanishingly small quantities and even smaller concentrations (i.e. thinly distributed in the atmosphere making it hard for anyone to get a large dose) to the point which you can pick pretty much any other class of vehicles or source of lead and be reasonably sure it is causing more disease and death. I know it's easy virtue points to rag on it but leaded avgas is just not an issue. GA has no lobby or economic impact to speak of so it's not like it's sticking around through regulatory capture.
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!
Gee if only the FAA could have certified unleaded gas some time in the last 3 decades. It’s not like us GA enthusiasts enjoy depending on an expensive leaded gas.
That's the excuse. Basically the real reason is that they only care about safety of the planes, not of the people handling the fuel (e.g. pilots, ground staff), or breathing the toxic fumes (everybody on or near an airport). So, they only care about safety when it is a very narrowly scoped notion of that concept.
Bureaucracies are weird like that. This is fundamentally not about people's safety but about covering their own safety (i.e. ass coverage). The problem is not something bad might happen but that they'd be held accountable for it.
Never mind that something bad has been known to happen for the last half century or so that they are not being held accountable for. People actually get sick and die because of leaded fuel but it's not their problem. And never mind that the bad thing that might happen is basically some ancient engines not running that well with unleaded fuel. That's why certification processes exist for engines. You can test this and decide to not certify certain engines for unleaded fuel. Ensuring people fly around with certified engines definitely is their problem. Any modern engine is basically certified for unleaded fuel already.
This seems like such a cop-out excuse. We'd rather harm potentially millions of people with toxic materials rather than inconvenience a few dozen aviation enthusiasts. Progress moves forward, if these old engines can't function in this new world they should be scrapped and replaced with something that can do the job.
And BTW, general aviation has been asking for leaded avgas to be dropped for decades now. The holdup is not the pilots or plane owners but the goddamn FAA [0].
I think we'd all rather burn cheaper / more prevalent gas than a leaded fuel that is the output of specialty refining. We're not allowed to by regulation, though, and furthermore present solutions would also endanger safety in a big slice of aircraft. The fleet of general aviation aircraft is really old, after all.
Let's not be so dramatic as to say that the general aviation fleet is single handedly responsible for poisoning the world with lead.
When leaded car gas was still in use it resulted in 4-5 million tons of lead emissions per year.[1]
The use of leaded aviation fuel contributes 500 tons per year according to the EPA[2]. Compared to 5,000,000 tons for cars historically.
Of course, any lead is not good and we should be shooting for zero. Which is the goal of the unleaded G100UL aviation fuel. But let's not try to say that personal aviation is evil when it's contributing a fraction of a percent of lead contamination. Frankly, we have bigger pollution problems to worry about than a very small amount of lead emissions from an ever shrinking fleet of piston powered aircraft.
Mind you that general aviation is more than rich people flying around in their planes. It's medical flights, it's training future airline pilots, it's aerial surveying, and many more critical tasks for society.
That's a bit too harsh. The GA people are lobbying to continue to be able to fly their aircraft. The FAA has been sitting on the problem of non-leaded avgas for something like 30 years now. The GA people don't like being exposed to lead any more than anyone else.
GA pilot here. This is true and most of us don't like using leaded gas either. It's nasty stuff that leads to increased wear on our engines, is more expensive, and is increasingly used as justification for closing airports. Plus we're exposed to it when fueling our planes.
However, it's worth mentioning that recently the first unleaded avgas, G100UL, was approved by the FAA. We're trying to move away from 100LL (leaded avgas) and are finally making some progress on that front.
> 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].
It is amazing what a technological backwater aviation is.
Leaded gas was phased out for cars 40 years ago. They still use leaded gas for piston aircraft and there is no realistic plan to end it.
Boeing is still flying the 737 aircraft family from 1968. They still haven't upgraded the control systems to the modern electronic control systems that Airbus and other manufacturers have used since 1988.
Any car from 1968 would be illegal to sell in the developed world because it hasn't kept up with emissions, fuel economy, safety and other standards. Incremental changes wouldn't cut it, any nameplate that has lasted that long has had multiple "clean sheet" designs.
The same is true for computers, electronics, and most other products.
In the case of aviation there is complete regulatory capture. If Boeing doesn't want to upgrade, the FAA doesn't make them. If American Airlines doesn't want to upgrade, the FAA doesn't make them.
There is talk of making artificial jet fuel using this failed technology
Any serious work on green fuels for ground transportation today centers around alcohols, dimethyl ether and other chemicals that are practical to manufacture. The aviation industry can't be bothered to qualify new fuels so we are going to see endless excuses rather than progress in controlling carbon emissions.
And you can still buy leaded fuel today decades and decades later due to the "temporary" exemption for airplanes while they implement alternatives (hint - they won't while they can just burn leaded gas).
The problem here is the people burning the leaded gas are not the ones impacted - babies, pregnant women not burning it but impacted by it most significantly. Old guys with $ (average, yes there are amazing young female pilots) flying GA planes but less likely to be impacted.
Their answer to global warming is to make ‘green’ jet fuel by using painfully slow and expensive Fischer-Tropsch chemistry to build up hydrocarbons rather than switch to something reasonable like alcohols, dimethyl ether or methane. Ground transportation is 20-30 years ahead of aviation in terms of sustainable fuels but in the backwater of aviation they are too afraid to make any changes at all in fuels.
> General av is seen as a backwater that is barely hanging on and couldn't possibly get the lead out.
The issue is infrastructure. Modern engines run fine on unleaded fuel, but the little airstrips in the middle of nowhere all have 100LL and/or jet fuel, so that's what pilots use.
I know a few pilots who are prefer to use unleaded in their Rotax engines to prevent spark plug fouling, and they have to jump through some pretty ridiculous hoops to get gas, while their buddies just fill up with whatever is on the field.
GA flying is important for a lot of industry, and a lot of remote communities. it might have taken some work, but they could have found a way to use unleaded fuel in airplanes in fewer than 50 years.
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