AVweb
3 HN recommenders · recommended in 3 months, 2022–2026
15:16 · 169K views · Aug 13, 2022
AVweb's Paul Bertorelli explains in part two of a series why general aviation has not replaced leaded avgas. He covers industry inertia, bureaucratic delays and the exemption that lets the industry keep using lead.
HN recommends the series for explaining why unleaded avgas has been so hard to approve, usually in threads about FAA and EPA fuel decisions.
3 comments from Hacker News
Impressive work by GAMI who are working on it since decades. AVWeb made 2 videos on the subject of leaded avgas and on how hard it is to get it approved. In addition, the FAA launched several failed attempts with the industry at large. * [LINK] The Long, Twisted And Slightly Ridiculous Story of Avgas Part 1 * this video The Long, Twisted And Slightly Ridiculous Story of Avgas Part 2 When reading the announcement, it looks like some municipalities in California started banning the sale of leaded avgas and I suspect that helped to push the FAA to finally move in approving G1000UL. Not surprisingly, they will start providing it to the California market before the other states. In the announcement on avweb.com ( [LINK] ), they also credit Mark Baker from the AOAP to encourage the FAA to complete the project.
The uphill battle of unleaded avgas leaves both the main players in the industry and the regulators themselves looking bad—but in a banal kinda way. I enjoy AVWeb on YT for AV news (really, I just enjoy the humor/personality of Paul Bertorelli lol), here are a few insightful videos that summarize the story: The Long, Twisted And Slightly Ridiculous Story of Avgas Part 1 (14:22) [LINK] Part 2 (15:15) this video and G100UL Approved Now What? (When the FAA approved the first unleaded 100-octane avgas a year ago) [LINK]
We're working on it, slowly but surely. This has been a known problem for a long time, at least since 2009 if not earlier. GAMI's G100UL was approved as a 100LL replacement in 2022, but there is still some controversy. Avweb has done a good series of videos on this. There were some real engineering concerns and some typical aviation conservative decision making. But really, it's a tragedy of the FAA fumbling the ball for decades at this point. [LINK] this video [LINK] [LINK] [LINK]