Musical chairs is a fun school-age game. Music is played while people walk and dance around chairs that total one fewer than those in the game. When the music stops, everyone must grab a chair and sit down. The person left standing is out. One chair is removed and the music starts again.
This process is repeated until there are just two players and one chair. When the music stops, the two battle for that last chair. The last person standing loses.
As of Aug. 30, 2021, the general aviation industry is left standing in the leaded fuel version of musical chairs.
According to an AP News story, “Algeria stopped providing leaded gas last month [July], prompting the U.N. Environment Agency to declare the ‘official end’ of its use in cars, which has been blamed for a wide range of human health problems.”
Algeria, a country in northern Africa along the Mediterranean Sea, was our last partner in the game. No longer.
Also from the story: “Leaded gas is still used in aviation fuel for small planes, an issue that Janet McCabe, deputy administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, said the EPA was working with the FAA to address.”
The problem with musical chairs is that when the music stops, at the end of the game, everyone knows the only one left standing.
I can only imagine that pressure on the general aviation industry will intensify in the wake of this announcement.
Since I fly a Rotax powered Tecnam, the preferred fuel is 91 octane Mogas or Swift UL94.Unfortunately either one is very difficult to find in my area. If I am on a trip, it is almost impossible to find unless I fly far out of route.
Since I live at a private air park,the closest airport with fuel only sells LL100 avgas, discontinuing 91 Mogas, and then Ul94 after weak demand for both.
As a GA aviator now, I read there is one unleaded option that appears viable according to AOPA with perhaps a second at increased costs for our high compression GA engines. It seems that technology itself it taking it’s toll on GA. Our powerplants are of old design made in better times. I see automotive tecnology has far exceeded the reliability and efficiency of the old piston powerplants that we depend on. Personally, I would like to replace the four cylinder Lycoming piston engine with a small efficient, smoother, reliable inexpensive certified turboprop powerplant. If massed produced many current GA piston aircraft could move to burning jet fuel or refined kerosene. But what kind of issues could we face there? Beside the costs? So, now there is only one plant in the world making TEL for our engines? And it is in the UK? What happened to our US plant(s)? I did see a small US company working on a small 200 SHP turboprop. It has not yet flown. Will it ever? Other in the past had flown small TP engines, and are no longer around. At this point, it appears to be a dream. Reliabilty, will be a key along with the use of new materials, which are expensive. I know Lycoming made turbine powerplants for the Huey’s which I had the opportunity of flying so long ago. Electric technology still lacks the true technology to be practicle. So, we will have to continue running our small aircraft on AVGAS with lead, until a better option comes out. Diesel engines also seem to have had their issues. It is like many of us small aircraft owners could eventually be stuck or grounded. I sincerely hope not.
I have been following aviation for the last 30 years, mostly from the sidelines, except period of some 5 years, 20 yers ago, when I leaned to fly. I have been amazed at how the pilot community has concentrated in gazing at its belly button with the leaded gas issue. The attitude has been: ‘how dare you try to tell us we cannot continue burning leaded gas’. The “efforts” to find an unleaded alternative have, looking from the sidelines, been mostly laughable, mostly to give excuses for the continuation of the antiquated aviation power plant technology that still dominates.
Just imagine if aviation would have followed the timeline of the automotive industry, which has long ago overcome any disadvantages of getting rid of lead with technological advances. The limited number of high performance piston aircraft that truly needed leaded fuel would have long ago been converted to newer power plants that do not. STCs would have taken care of the rest. Instead of going that route, the engine manufacturers have kept pumping out more of those lead-thirsty monsters, so now the number of engines that have to be provided for is much higher.
A silver lining in all of this (?): When lead will inevitably be banned, maybe some pilots will be ready to embrace electric propulsion…
Santa Clara County is where Reid-Hillview Airport in San Jose, California, and the city and the county supervisors have voted to close the airport.
They hired some schmuck to do a study, and he placed lead monitors around the airport and downwind, and the runup area put out significant levels of lead. He also took soil samples around the area and ALL came back with lead content, probably from the old auto days, but the airport is blamed.
In a call in, one supervisor responded to the news that Swift Fuel is not at KRHV and that 90% of the aircraft will be using it immediately, and her response was : a) Any amount of lead is unacceptable, b) It doesn’t stop planes from other areas where only leaded fuel is available from flying into Reid-Hillview.
The Schmuck that wrote the study used data in a Belgium study that correlated lead in the air to reductions in I.Q. He had a table of lead in the air to lower I.Q that showed for minute airborne lead increases the I.Q.s of children lowered. IMHO the study was to serve a pregone opinion by the supervisors. There was no demonstration of the data integrity presented, just the correlation.
However, the EPA is conducting airborne lead studies at GA airports all around the USA.
Look here and see if the EPA is studying YOUR airport. https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2016-09/documents/memo-selc-airport-mon-stdy_1.pdf
Just a note as to ethanol free mogas. Here in Michigan it was first available at marinas,it is now widely available at service stations.
So check any area marina for ethanol free gasoline. The boat people burn more gas than most of us do, twin 454s burn a lot of gas. The ethanol tends to dissolve polyester resins which many fuel tanks were made with. They don’t have the FAA to deal with but they did have to find a solution when the gas they had to sell was destroying their customer’s boats! So marinas looked to their suppliers to get ethanol free gas.
Woke up today and self-serve 100LL at my home drome (KTIW) was now $6.07/gallon.
I wonder if 0-200s can run on a 50-50 blend of Coleman Fuel & Marvel Mystery Oil?
OTOH; if my wife had a better job, I’d be looking for a really well-used DA-42.
Aren’t there additives for lead? There were additives you could buy at your neighborhood auto parts store for older cars that required lead for coating valve stems. I never used these, so I don’t know if they’re still available. And, they probably need to be FAA certified for use in GA aircraft I surmise. Regards/J
Fortunately I can and do use MOGAS in my plane. I actually double hours between oil changes, using it versus 100LL. And it’s cheaper. However, I do need to carry it in (pain in the ***) and in Hellinois, we are forced to buy it with ethanol. (Not good for anything). If they take out the lead from 100LL will that mean I can basically get MOGAS everywhere? That would be awesome. And it should be much less expensive than Swift Fuel which is simply ridiculous in price now. I went through this in CA over 20 years ago in the marine environment. I had to go get a lead additive to use in my older motors. The cost of doing business. There is no issue here. Sometimes you just need to accept the majority decision and go with the flow. If you can’t afford a lead additive, you probably can’t afford to fly. If we go all one fuel type and we can rid ourselves of the current Administration, fuel prices should come back down again. Need to pay better attention at the polls in 2024 though.
And if you like math….DECALIN RUNUP FUEL ADDITIVE 1 qt is $43.75 at Spuce. That will make 1920 gallons of leaded fuel for those tired old engines. That’s .02 per gallon…Let’s get real here folks.
Decalin is NOT a lead substitute it is used to help clean up the harmful lead deposits. Dwcalin does not raise the octane of any fuel.
I don’t know of any certified aircraft that can run mogas with ethanol. There are no approved lead additives. Lets keep politics out of this discussion.
Not sure what you mean by Swift Fuels ridiculous price. I checked last week in San Carlos California where Swift 94 octane is available and it was $.10 cheaper than 100 low lead.
I think that the reference was for the Gami G100UL being higher cost than 100LL.
UL94 can’t be used in high compression or turbo engines.
At $5.55 it’s more expensive than 100LL here in the Sacramento area, $4.90.
https://www.airnav.com/airport/KSQL
The amount of lead used in GA is a grain of sand on the beach now compared to the past when trillions of gallons of gas was burned in cars.
The problem has been erased for all intents and purposes.
Folks, we are the problem. I am an EAA and AOPA member. I asked Mark Baker back in 2016 why AOPA had wasted 15 years of effort in supporting a chemical formulation that it so difficult and expensive to produce that not one single oil company was willing to do it without a huge public subsidy. Money can solve a lot of problems but up to that time, nada. (Our auto gas supply is subsidized by tax laws in the drilling, transportation, refinement, distribution, and in some cases use of auto gas. GAMI and Swiftfuels won’t be. ) Bless his heart, in a bad spot he hemmed and hawed in front of 500 or more pilots (3/4 of them listening could have used existing alternatives) and said the party line we had to have a spectrum wide answer to 100ll when that policy made any scale production economically really9 difficult. Everyone’s eyes glazed over and just accepted the idea that there was only one path when there were many other ways, sprayed lead all over the ramp, and we all flew away.
Understand, it was always possible to produce an unleaded fuel alternative but incredibly difficult and costly to do so. But really, nobody treated any of this as a truly legitimate concern and many tasked with a solution treated as just another way to profit from the solution process industry. You know: meeting after meeting after meeting. All of the engine manufacturers and all of the infrastructure that keeps 60 year old airplanes with 80 year old technology going like flying $700 hammers really didn’t want a change and have proven that over time. They say otherwise, but really, from the FAA to the repair shops they don’t by evidence of the tens of millions of dollars spent each year servicing burned valves in cylinders. Redesigning cylinder heads and valves to the same materials Ford and Honda have used for decades? Naw can’t do that says Lycoming who are hiding behind their production certificate and lawyers. Let the good times roll. So, no, not really.
Ok, so I have libled nearly everyone in the pyramid so far from the FAA, manufacturers, alphabet groups, and the industry overall. But the most culpable ones are we owners. I own a 51 Bonanza. It still has a E225 in it that can burn 82 red gas if we had it and lean even in taxi fighting 100ll plug fouling even with fine wire plugs. To replace it I will pay for a rebuilt $50k engine that if left to its own will kill me out of the crate and yours will to. Changing lead fowled oil each at 50 hrs? Would you put up with this in your car? Any car? Would your car insurance insure a car like this? Howabout a tractor? I’m guilty as charged.
We have choices but between our “friends” in the aviation ecosphere we piston owners don’t have any good ones left. The jet owners are howling with laughter now with “we told you so” with jetA a dollar a gal less and no lead. Economics will force changes on us. Love or hate this message about an entire industry failure to change over something as innocuous as fuel, but it’s bigger than the fuel. I hope to see Swiftfuels someday at my tiny airport but I ask you to just think about it. Thats the first step to solutions.
This to shall pass. Will a few be unable to continue flying? Yes, but even at an additional $1/gal, it is a minor part of the overall expense of owning/renting small aircraft. To some, it will be the straw that breaks the camel’s back, but they are only one other type of crisis away from having to drop out anyway. IMHO, The current inflation trends are much more danger to the fleet as a whole.
The amount of lead that avgas puts into the air is like urinating in the ocean – it doesn’t matter. But it does give the government another reason to control and abuse people.
Perfectly put!
Spoken like someone with brain damage from lead poisoning.
Actual scientists disagree. The amount of lead avgas puts in the air is enough to brain-damage small children living near the airport.
I read and hear a lot of pilots and owners saying they won’t or can’t pay for the new fuels if they are $1.00 more per gallon, and a smile and remember back to the ’70s when we faced our first serious auto fuel embargo and prices doubling (or more) of that precious resource. There are 2 basic solutions to this problem: 1) pay more for an available fuel, and 2) don’t and quit flying. Every one of us was offered that solution for our auto fuel and we all found a way to continue our lives. We didn’t like it, but it wasn’t the end of the world.
I’d love to see widespread FADEC and diesel become available, but that wouldn’t have been a benefit with either of my owned aircraft (’46 Funk and ’46 NAvion) in the past. Some aircraft just won’t operate properly on auto fuel, so let’s encourage our local suppliers to bring in alternate, approved fuels and just resign ourselves to a bit higher cost to fly. (In the example given Jim H. below, the increase only amounts to 1 less $100 hamburger a month.)
Thanks Ben!
There are alternatives coming out now, but there’s a big gap between a new lead-free high-octane fuel that’s available for just a few aircraft models at a handful of airports, and a widely available alternative for all avgas airplanes.
The clock is ticking: even if the EPA doesn’t kill 100LL in the US, there’s only one TEL plant left in the world, in Manchester UK, and if they close for either economic or environmental reasons, there is no more 100LL regardless. It’s a low-profit, high-liability line of business, and nobody would be foolish enough to start up in it in 2021. Going into denial and burying our heads in the sand won’t make the problem disappear; it will just leave us less prepared.
And just how much more expensive are the alternatives going to be? There are a alot of pilots who are barely able to afford to fly now.
Hard to say, but compared to maintenance, insurance, or parking, fuel isn’t a huge expense even with the high price of avgas.
I don’t know about others, but fuel is my #1 expense.
150 hours of flying costs me $6,000 in fuel.
2nd is the hangar at $3,300 / yr
Insurance is $900
annual is $400
I put $15 / hr for maint. , $2,200.
Another $1/ gal. will cost me $1,200 , a substantial increase.!
$85 / hour total for flying in California? Are you sure you didn’t drop a digit somewhere because that seems miraculous? If its true, congratulations because I’d love to see that here in NW Arkansas.
It’s true..and I co-own the C175B with 3 other pilots, who share the fixed expenses. so, my overall cost is $67 per hour.
The C175 is a fixed gear, fixed pitch, simple aircraft..
We do all the work on the aircraft under the guidance of and A/P IA, including the annual.
I’m an engineer, so we repair a number of parts vs exchanging for an overhauled part. ie; $6 for a set of field brushes vs $600 for an overhauled alternator.
So, doing your own wrenching can greatly reduce the cost of owning and flying.
Amen to that, and why is everyone ready to just roll over , and not stand up to this fake shortage , where was leaded fuel made in the first place , came out of the ground with lead !!
Ron you are kidding aren’t you?
Alternatives have tried to be made available however who is going to pay for it? is your average 172 owner going to drop $60,000-$100,000 for a new engine? I was planning on a sling TSI but had to change my plans since the cost of the engine and prop is now $58,000. The volume is too low and no one is willing to put in the kind of money needed to develop the engines necessary. To get developed and certified is a 10+ year endeavor and while that is going on you aren’t making any money and you have to pay all of the costs. When you do get the new equipment certified they are trying to make back their development cost in a few years given sales of a few hundred items at most. The prices have to be sky high and very few people can afford it.
There are only two ways to fix this. either get a billionaire like Elon Musk who likes to do it for a hobby to fund it. Or get the certification rules changed to allow development to be done faster, the liability rules changed so a third of the cost isn’t liability insurance and figure out how to convince a company that if they can just get the price down they will increase their market share significantly.
Or we can just ban leaded avgas and most pilots will have to stop flying because they will not be able to afford it anymore. Just look at Europe you have LSA type aircraft with 100hp rotax type engines and you have they guys with turbine engine aircraft and nothing in-between.
I would really like to see something change but I am not holding my breath. We have a massive catch 22 there are not enough people buying aircraft because the prices are too high and you would have to get more people to get the prices down. And no one is willing to risk the kind of money that would be required to break this deadlock.
There’s no need for a C172 owner to spend that kind of money. Up to the Cessna 172P there’s a good chance you qualify for a mogas STC, just like I would with my Piper PA-28. Most flight-school trainers and other lower-HP planes will be fine regardless; it’s the planes with high-compression, high-performance engines that are in doubt: https://www.autofuelstc.com/
I have the mogas stc for my Cessna, but there is no ethanol free auto gas in California. So, I’m stuck burning 100LL.
Or, now, the more expensive unleaded fuel….if it’s ever made available here.
If 100LL does get discontinued, airports will start carrying ethanol-free mogas. I haven’t bothered with the mogas STC yet even though ethanol-free is widely available in Ontario, b/c it’s not worth lugging 5 gallon jerry cans out to my plane (at least not to me).
The socialist state of Kalifornia will never remove ethanol from mogas.
100LL will continue, to avoid the mass revolt by pilots and airport owners.
Without 100LL the US Civil Air Patrol would be grounded, no more search and rescues. They fly Cessna 182’s, burning 100LL.
The CAP mission will continue regardless of the available fuel. If we have to switch to the 100UL we will.
I agree. This is the other 1/2 of the issue.
So, it seems that experimental aircraft will be a majority of new aircraft, since they can incorporate EFI and electronic ignition and other engine mods that improve power and fuel efficiency.
Also, the variety of air frames offered range from 200+ mph and the STOL ‘bush’ aircraft.
And, there are a number of engine choices from 80 hp to 310 hp.
My school at KRHV switched all their 172’s, Citabrias, a 182 and a Maule M7 over to UL84. No issue at all, just flew one of the Citabrias over the weekend and it was great. It is way easier than you might think. Of course, the new 100UL will be the main answer to 100LL once that becomes more available.
I’d rather think of it that prior to 1995 we all had a chair in the leaded gas room, that offered fuel from 87 to 130 octane.
Then in 1996 everyone, but us, was told to move to a chair in the unleaded with mtbe room, We couldn’t move because it was only 93 octane, and because our fuel systems and engines were not certified to use a non-leaded fuel.
Then in 2005, everyone was told to move to the unleaded with ethanol room, except us, again. [ mtbe was found to contaminate ground water ].
So, here we are, the only one with a chair in the leaded fuel room…. until they tell us to get out…or fine a fuel just for us.
So, there appears to be a 100/130 octane unleaded fuel that we can use, and we get a chair in that room….still all by ourselves, [ except for some race car guys.]
The bureaucratic obstacles are bizarre, given that over 80% of the planes in the fleet are fine with existing lower-octane (ethanol-free) gasoline.
What’s happening is that a very small number of very rich jackasses who fly planes which require extra-high octane have held the rest of you hostage, using their money to override public health and exert undue influence on the FAA. Their planes should be grounded, and everyone else should just move to 94UL or even lower octane formulations if they can handle it. Will save the rest of you a lot of money, in addition to protecting children’s brains.
Considering general aviation’s inability to evolve is it really any surprise? We still have Engine Tech from the 1950s. Carbs should be long gone and replaced by injectors all the time. FADEC should be the standard instead of two extra levers for the Pilot to have in their workload. It’s past time for GA to move the technology forward. More Diesel engines, unleaded, and everyone on FADEC is the best future for aviation. But none of this is a benefit the manufacturers who will lose money if TBO rises due to computer management.