Your take on Avgas?

[Lood]

I read an interesting but also rather worrying article in a local aviation magazine last night on the worldwide Avgas situation. Apparently only one company is still making the needed additive despite the pressure from the "greens". What is the feeling in the US on the possibilty of Avgas becoming very scarce or even non existend and what are the airplane companies planning to do? If the predictions become reality, they are producing and selling airplanes that will be not be able to fly in the future. The author of said atricle reckoned that most piston engined airplanes might be as usefull in a couple of years as a film camera is currently. I guess the absense of modern electronic systems in our engines probably has to do with that certifiaction process and its costs again? It's just hard to believe that in todays technologically advanced world, no alternatives can be found for either fuel or engine systems.

[Cruiser]

with over 600,000 pilots and close to 250,000 GA planes in the US, I don't think they can get away with just leaving us high and dry. The biggest problem as I understand is the detonation margins required by the FAA need lead in the fuel to get a high enough octane level to be safe.

The industry and FAA have been working on an acceptable replacement for years. AOPA just did an article on an experimental that flew from Kansas (?) to Maryland on biofuel.

Besides, didn't the U.S. government pass a constitutional amendment banning alcohol once? How did that work out?

[Buster1]

I personally think Avgas is on the way out, but not for a long time.  There are too many GA users around, and if we keep using it, they will make it.  Though I fear that it may get very expensive as time goes on and it gets more scarce, but who knows.

There are alternatives.  I saw a mooney at Oshkosh in 2006 that ran on ethanol, and the biofuel mooney on some tv show.  Didn't Cessna just launch a diesel engine??  I don't think it will be out of the question to change a few things with the engine to support a new type of gas...whatever they determine the replacement will be.  And if we all put FADEC controllers in, we might be able to run safely on autogas in the future... my $0.02

[Mooney_Allegro]

This 100LL issue is one reason that I'm glad I'm not at TBO just yet, because I think in a few years engines may have to change a bit to support a new type of gas.  I just hope that the new type of gas will be cheaper than our present supply. 

[KSMooniac]

I too don't think we'll be stranded any time soon.  A large number of GA planes can run fine on unleaded avgas, but the trouble is that the minority of planes that cannot are the ones that are really "working" GA planes, like the bigger turbo-charged twins, and those really cannot be left stranded.  So, we continue on with 100LL right now.

The Swift Fuel development looks very intriguing as a biofuel that sems to be economical, and most importantly is NOT derived from food stocks like ethanol, which has screwed up the markets royally IMO.  Hopefully they can scale up to mass production while keeping the price very reasonable.  It seems to be an easy replacement with no hardware changes on our end.

On the hardware side, the engine OEMs are working on FADECs and the GAMI folks have their PRISM system going thru the cert hoops currently.  That system looks very promising and will work with unleaded fuel in any aircraft engine.  It will come with a price, though.

I'm not losing any sleep over the issue.  I really hope the Swift Fuel turns out to be as good as it looks.