FAA, do your damn job | Hacker News Reader

FAA, do your damn job

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307 pointssklargh281 comments

Part of the irony here is the FAA enforces strict deadlines upon those it regulates, but seems to ignore deadlines set for itself or by Congress.

My medical certificate is due for renewal in August. I have no ability to tell the FAA, "sorry, it's been delayed, I'll have an update for you in a few months."

Edit to add: Lest this come off as generic complaining, here's an example of people dying because the FAA failed to do in a timely manner what Congress repeatedly told them to do:

Ten years ago, Section 203 of the Airline Safety and Federal Aviation Administration Extension Act of 2010 mandated that the FAA create an electronic pilot records database (PRD), which was intended to improve the timeliness and efficiency of the PRIA records retrieval process by providing hiring operators and DAs with direct access to pilots’ FAA, NDR, and former employer records in a single database. By 2016, the FAA had not yet implemented the PRD, and Congress imposed an April 30, 2017, deadline, which the FAA also missed. Although the FAA has begun phasing in the use of the PRD, the PRD is not yet fully functional; it contains only pilots’ FAA records and is available to hiring operators for use on a voluntary basis.

On March 30, 2020, the FAA published a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) that outlined PRD functions.

https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/... [PDF] (page 49)

I was an amaetur pilot for some time, enough time to conclude from experience and talking to colleagues in the realm of aviation that regulatory institutions across the world enforce the strict (and reasonably so) rules on pilots and smaller companies, while turning a blind eye to big airlines, manufacturers and succumbing to political incentives.

I would be interested to know why you quit.

I took some classes, but never got the license - it seems very high risk to fly once every few months in terms of skill degradation from disuse, and I never got any real excitement out of just going up to fly a rented Cessna when it's $150+ an hour, so I don't see myself just doing for that. Actually "flying cross-country" also seems impractical without skill upkeep.

Seems like the stereotype "it's for rich bored people" is mainly true unless it's a primary hobby or people are going for airline pilot in the long run.

P.S. Another random thought, but I feel like I would need to just spend 2 days straight landing and taking off to get comfortable with it. Like take-off, get some altitude, transition to slow flight, practice approach pattern, fully land, turn around, take off again. Seems like the classes spend a lot of time on stuff that doesn't really happen that much (stalls), stuff that isn't critical (ideal 180 turns within x time), etc.

Yes, I and my father would 'fall' in the category of rich bored people (or being more precise, well-off STEM grads). It's risky, but it was beautiful. Unfortunately, at the time I took the classes I was also writing my thesis which meant sleeping very little (4 hours a day at best), and on top of my college studies I had to commute to the aerodrome 1 hour just to get there in the morning. I was so tired that I'd fall asleep at noon on the ride home. Then one day I crashed the plane on a fence after landing, it was a runway excursion due to my low reflexes and lack of sleep. The plane sustained minor damage and I got out unharmed, insurance covered most of the bill (a couple thousand) and I decided that I would get back to aviation after finishing my academic duties in a different setting, likely as an engineer/numerical analyst. I'm looking into buying smaller aircraft, likely an ultralight plane or a STOL [0]. I just like aviation too much, but I'm not willing to have another brush with death.

In the meantime, two of my acquaintances died instantly after crashing on the slope of a volcano.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STOL

I quit flying because I found that I didn't want to go from A to B without having a car on the other end, that "just flying" was pretty boring, that aerobatics was real fun but also a huge commitment, and that I did not care that much after the initial success.

I have about 175 hours, some 25 or so aerobatics (Attitude Aviation, Livermore, under the original owner), most of the time in and around the SF Bay Area. One hour in a glider (Byron)

I started flying at WVFC (West Valley Flying Club) while working at a nearby software company. Mostly during work hours actually, I was pretty bored at work.

I had already done some skydiving - during pre-military training in East Germany. I had had glasses when I grew up and in East Germany you did not fly casually, same with the skydiving, if you were young the goal always was the military career. On the other hand, the state paid for it all. Because of glasses I was under the impression I had no chance to ever be a pilot so I never even tried. Later I stopped needing glasses but never revisited the issue, despite some heavy longing (during youth I subscribed to a monthly East German flying magazine.

When I worked in my boring software job the Piper and Cessna aircraft kept flying right over our lunch area on their landing approach to the airport just two or so miles away. So some day while having lunch, looking up, it finally clicked in my head - I now had actual money and all the East German restrictions where gone, why couldn't I...

Anyway, I really enjoyed it, not just the flying itself but also the system and the discipline it required. Even things like approaches to airports without tower and radio and other procedures.

I increasingly felt that it became too much effort for less and less gain. A whole Sunday afternoon if not more was gone even for less than an hour of aerobatics. Advantage of that type of flying, even if it requires something with a higher hourly rate than a Cessna or a Piper, is that an hour or less is all you need, so in the end you do significantly more "flying" than during cross-country, but you actually safe money and time. During cross-country, as far as the flying is concerned, you mostly just sit there. The processes and procedures can be fun. Still, as I said, I did not really gain anything from flying to some other place, another reason for aerobatics, where you end up at the same airport you started from.

Two images from a relatively cheap but modern positive-G-only acro training aircraft, back then one of Attitude Aviations:

https://i.imgur.com/Rd5VW3R.jpg (trying to take a picture while flying a loop - so I ended up with a terrible loop, but I got the picture)

https://i.imgur.com/4bwJn13.jpg (view of cockpit of Grob 115C acro)

Only replying to this to avoid spam, but really appreciate both perspectives. I think all of this resonates with what I originally described, though I have way less experience than both of you.

> succumbing to political incentives

Why are people surprised when government institutions succumb to political incentives?

I once had a discussion with a PhD research scientists who said how great NSF funding was because they made funding decisions completely on scientific merit. I pointed out all the ways that it obviously allocated funds based on bias and politics.

Yes, I agree with your point. But I was talking about nastier cases of corruption, for example, in certain latin american countries some low-cost airlines between central and south america got approved for operation, some without even satisfying basic requirements, but god forbid small businesses didn't. After some years, these same airlines filed for bankruptcy or got suspended. The kicker? It was discovered they were never profitable, and have since been suspected to be involved in dropping of foreign illegal workers, coming to their destinations as tourists. The most obvious giveaway apart from the latter is that if a carrier is low-cost, it most definitely should have at least a set of profitable domestic flights, and the ones I mentioned above didn't. One of the politicians suspected to be involved (this started under her presidency) is now sitting at the top of a United Nations office.

"The government has a defect. It's _potentially_ democratic. Corporations have no defects. They're pure tyrannies."

- Noam Chomsky

Tell us about the last time a corporation ordered you to do anything?

you make a good point and i agree with you, especially today.

but, to answer your question in earnest: a long time ago - east india company? dole fruit?

TEIC was a quasi government operation, not a corporation as we know them today.

agreed.

but does that also apply (though obviously not to the same extent i’d admit) to say halliburton?

A corporation can change the world around you to your massive detriment without your input. Poison your river, pollute your air, etc. They don't have to tell you to do anything to harm you without recourse.

You can sue them for harm done to you. People do it all the time.

the FAA enforces strict deadlines upon those it regulates, but seems to ignore deadlines set for itself or by Congress.

I think this just comes with the bureaucratic territory. My wife works in healthcare finance, especially with CMS on Medicare reimbursement. Having watched her doing this for a couple decades now, I can tell you that if you miss a CMS deadline by a day, they'll come down on you like a ton of bricks. But the deadlines set for their own operations are purely aspirational. They seem to kinda maybe try to come near those dates, but they're almost universally slipped. Adding insult to injury, when CMS misses a date to publish new regulations or whatever, that doesn't necessarily mean that my wife gets a corresponding number of days to submit her responses: she's often got to absorb it on her side, working faster because the government works slower.

I wish there was some sort of federal law that mandated reciprocal deadline leniency in this kind of situation.

Imagine a scenario where a government department was held to the same standard that they hold others to.

Imagine that.

This sounds like a good idea, could we extend it to the employee/employer relationship as well? Where your bosses gets held to the same standards they hold you?

If you think that's legally or practically unworkable, well, there's your answer.

Sadly, Washington is the largest special interest group in Washington.

Or, if a deadline is blown, the agency has to either approve the permit, or ask a judge for an extension based on actual need.

Agreed on bureaucracy. Bureaucracy and the imbalance of power is rampant in the U.S., and it concerns me. I don't know if people ever did, but it really feels like nobody gives a shit about their customers or citizens, as far as companies and the U.S. government, respectively, are concerned.

Last year, through a fluke since I ended up being away from my apartment for several months, I found out my gas company had incorrectly installed the gas meters in my apartment. Thus, I had been paying the upstairs neighbors' gas bill (and vice versa) for over five years. It took 7-9 months to get the thousands of dollars they owed me. And that was after basically calling them every two weeks, going through no-shows of their technicians, and arguing with them that they needed to go back the entire time I had overpaid. They wanted to only go back two or three years because that's only how much data they kept. Which fuck that, because after arguing about it, they were somehow magically able to go back the full duration of my account with them, "finding" the data. We literally hunted for a house and bought one in the in-between time of discovering the issue and getting my money. Can you imagine being able to tell some company you owe money to "I'll get it to you when I get to it, I'm really busy right now" or that "well, my records only go back so far, so I can't do anything about money I owe you before a certain time"? You'd be submitted to a credit agency and completely wrecked.

In this and more of these scenarios, it is absolutely the most remote possibility that you can act like this towards companies and the government when they want something from you. It really bothers me to my core that we have no power against companies or government. This is what it's like to live in an oligarchy.

Well...maybe. I will say USG is super on top of their shit when it comes to passports overseas. Total adhesion to protocol, and well thought out protocol at that, I have to recognize that in the face of your accusation of incompetence. You could be right too, not saying you're not. But I feel obliged to vindicate them.

It's a good point- there are different agencies and even departments within agencies with different leaderships and cultures of how things should be done. I've also only ever had good experiences as an American overseas dealing with passport/embassy issues in general (although it sounds terrible for anyone trying to immigrate) but other agencies are an absolute nightmare. USGS is doing their best but I think it's going to take a seismic event to reform the culture in some of these places.

EDIT: Using "you" rhetorically, not accusing parent poster.

I actually have heard of this, despite not witnessing it much. Dark side of the moon, but yeah...I guess they must have some way of detecting my vibe, like I believe in paying taxes, not only when rich, but with little regard for how poor as well, and have never met a single person who agrees with me...well in the Bible yes, Christ paid 100% taxes. Just us two. Who knows if G-men have a way of detecting that, that would be so weird, like actually find a person who doesn't value the taxes they pay at 0%, which is identical to valuing the government at 0, and the work they do at 0, and even the help they provide you personally at 0 (otherwise you would value taxes at say .000001% of what you pay because that's how much is coming back to you, but that's my personal reasoning without any input from anybody claiming this, I've never heard an accountant make this claim), so I guess...if they pick up on people thinking they're worth literally fucking nothing in every way and in everything they do...they don't like that, and don't want to help you. Although they still help tons of people regardless. They may resent it though. And maybe if people weren't so tax-averse, but not just for what other people have to pay, but what they themselves have to pay (I've heard of this in Sweden, that's where I got these ideas), then the government would respect taxes differently because it's not as adversarial (putting myself in tax-hating shoes here, trying to see the moon's dark side from Earth with my imagination, because I sure can't do it with my empathy).

Now I'm starting to see why I disagree with everyone in this regard, little by little. Everyone hates taxes (meaning want to pay the minimum), except me. So everyone has an incredibly shitty relationship with the government (according to them, that's all I hear people talk about), except me. Maybe there's some link between those two things.

Note also if I choose I can reduce how much extra I pay unilaterally, I don't need literally anybody's permission to reduce what I contribute down to the near-minimum amounts like everyone else. Like if I judge that a government hates me with true hatred, I can develop the same hatred for paying taxes to it as anybody else.

The common denominator here is lack of competition. Utilities are regulated monopolies. No competition means no incentive to improve or provide better services at lower cost.

> here's an example of people dying

You didn't really quote anything that mentions death or injury, could you expand on that?

They linked to a PDF of an accident report for a 767 with 3 deaths, and included a page # to follow for the reference to the issue being relevant - follow it and you will find what you're looking for.

Dealing with the FAA over medical certification for mere third-class is enough to turn anyone into a government-hating conservative.

you better not be sad!

True. This is why I advise all of my students who want to be casual fliers only (i.e. not flying for hire) to switch to Basic Med. No need to seek out an AME (any family doctor can do it) and the appointment is only every four years (instead of every two if you are over 45). Even flight instructors can instruct with Basic Med.

I wish. You have to get a third class at least once before you can use Basic Med though.

true, basicmed was a relative disappointment based on what people were originally hoping for.

have you considered sport pilot or lsa?

You can't do either if you've already applied for third class medical.

so a pending (not a denied) class 3 means you can’t fly under lsa? ugh, that sucks.

what about glider or motor glider? same deal?

(i am a private pilot who let his valid class 3 expire, flying under basicmed, getting more into lsa and motorgliders)

Really? After filling the form online, I just went to an AME that I booked and got out of there after perhaps an hour, certificate in hand.

Be glad you have the good fortune to not fall under the incredibly common conditions that get you into the "special issuance" bucket or flat-out denied.

Which would those be?

If you take an SSRI for anything (like a huge percentage of the population), good luck.

I have a good friend now who went in for his third class medical in October 2021, the doctor flagged a prescription he had previously been taking (but was no longer taking), and wanted clarification from the FAA. Now in April, it's still in the "review queue". Meanwhile he's grounded, with no end in sight as to when the answer will be returned.

Not only that, but once it's cleared, the medical date will be retroactive to October, so the renewal clock is ticking the whole time he can't be flying.

The COVID emergency use vaccines should prevent passing a flight physical. This is being widely ignored, apparently.

https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/av...

'The FAA generally requires at least one-year of post-marketing experience with a new drug before consideration for aeromedical certification purposes.'

That seems like a great example of the FFA getting out of the way of the necessary. Pandemic times are when rules need to be more flexible since we're responding to non-standard conditions.

If that rule wasn't waved pilots would need to chose between being more vulnerable to the pandemic vs. getting to draw an income for a year - that seems a lot worse than some rules being temporarily ignored.

Cardiac problems with the vaccines are being discovered and cause sudden issues. I would prefer following written rules or changing the rules, instead of ignoring rules.

That's protecting the one pilot in exchange for whatever is on the plane in terms of risk.

So do we as a society prefer to have no flights for a year probably including cargo planes - while providing income relief/subsidies to those pilots or do we expect those pilots to go without vaccination and force them to endure a higher mortality rate from COVID?

Except it wasn't necessary based on the data. It was necessary based on political pressure from our owners.

First off given that we're in the middle of a pandemic and the vaccine was promoted to keep everyone safe - please stop spreading misinformation about vaccination.

Secondly, regardless of efficacy, most people thought it was necessary for their health and the health of others - so you're placing most level headed people in a position where they would need to chose between declining a completely beneficial treatment or else lose their livelihood.

Lastly, I don't know how it works where you live but up here in Canada I feel distinctly unowned by anyone.

"Misinformation"?

I have been an avid collector of scientific studies about COVID, COVID vaccination, repurposed therapeutics, and PCR test accuracy since 2020. Would you like me to share some of this "misinformation"? You might find it enlightening.

This is an issue with almost every federal agency. Every federal agency has been required to pass an audit since the 90s and the Department of Defense has yet to be able to do it despite being warned multiple times by congress. The issue is there are no consequences for them failing to do it.

"Rules for thee, not for me". What did you think the motto of the elite and the institutions has been forever?

Continuing to emit lead is completely outrageous. I was completely unaware it was happening.

I would urge anyone on this thread who is mad and to write a letter to the address at the bottom of the post.

It will be a heck of a lot more effective than just commenting here even if it feels like a mere drop in the bucket.

Exactly, I thought lead in fuel was banned a long time ago.

This really shouldn't be determined by amateur pilots preference, or even the FAA, it is up to the rest of us who are having lead rained down on us, to demand change.

Every single pilot flying for the airlines who didn't come via the military learned to fly in piston-engined airplanes. (Where would airline pilots get to the 1500 hours required since the Colgan 3407 crash?)

Without a workable substitute for 100LL, banning it is not practical.

Why is lead a requirement for piston-engine aircraft? Land vehicles seem to be doing just fine without leaded fuel

Because airplanes still use engine designs from 70 years ago. Your next question is: why? Same reason it takes 12 years to get a replacement fuel approved.

Piston-based aircraft are built to survive numerous failures that wouldn't be a major issue for a land-based vehicle (or a boat) - both of those just kind of sit there when the power generator fails. A plane turns into a glider at that time.

Off the top of my head, they mainly use magnetos instead other forms of ignition, have dual mag setups so that one can fail and the engine will still run.

And lead-based fuel lubrication is simpler than other forms.

Some work is being done on diesel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_diesel_engine#Modern_... - and jets of course run off of kerosene basically.

And a brand-new plane is really hard to build out cost-wise, much of the aviation fleet is very, very old.

There's a multi-part answer.

Legally (the subject that requires FAA approval) is that the type-certificate (the legal basis for certification and authority to operate) for these engines specifies the use of 100LL and the standard for 100LL is a composition-based standard, not a performance-based standard. If it doesn't have the prescribed amount of TEL, it's definitionally not 100LL, even if it would meet the performance requirement of the engine.

Then, from an engineering standpoint (the subject that companies are working on in order to propose fuels to the FAA via PAFI or GAMI seeking multi-model Supplemental Type Certificate), aircraft engines are stone-age in complexity and are overwhelmingly air-cooled, fixed timing [except during starting], and operate for hours on end at 75%+ of rated power. Your auto is water-cooled, has variable timing, and typically runs at 8-15% of rated power. An aircraft engine has to run reliably with cylinder head temperatures of 460ºF or more (your car's cylinders are much more tightly controlled as a result of the water cooling).

Why can't airplanes use a different engine? Airplanes are (legally) certified to use a specific engine and have had extensive flight testing to determine takeoff/landing distances, fuel consumption figures, etc. Those engines are (legally) certified to use a specific fuel [or list of fuels]. Automobile engines have a horrible track record when attempted to be converted to aviation usage. Small, normally aspirated engines are able to run on low-octane, ethanol-free pump gas. The aircraft with high-powered turbo-charged engines represent around 25% of the engines. Because of their higher utilization, those engines burn around 75% of the avgas purchased in a year. (These are the CapeAir fleet, skydive operators, etc.)

>The aircraft with high-powered turbo-charged engines represent around 25% of the engines. Because of their higher utilization, those engines burn around 75% of the avgas purchased in a year.

Wouldn't turbo-charged engines burn jet A-1 rather than avgas?

Turbine engines would, but that's different from turbo-charged (piston) engines.

That'd make sense - I'm just wondering how many of those would be in use today. From my limited experience with skydiving operators, I've seen only smaller dropzones run piston planes that take avgas (i.e. C182), or turboprops at larger operations (like a C208). Running a larger plane on avgas would be prohibitively expensive, lead to higher jump ticket prices and in return cause less people to jump there.

Ah sorry, I didn't see the part about using them as jump planes. Not sure about that, the ones I've seen are usually turbines. Plenty of twin-pistons used for transport though.

I should have said "high-compression or turbo-charged". The C182 after serial number 65176 uses the O470-U high-compression (8.6:1) engine which does not have an auto-fuel certification. C182s prior to that number use the less efficient, lower compression (7.0:1) O470-R engine, which can run physically unmodified on ethanol-free auto fuel.

(Note that what aviation considers high-compression is laughably low-compression in modern automobiles.)

That makes sense, thanks for the explanation. It didn't sound right to me that there would be so many turbo-charged piston aircraft, but if we add the high-compression engines then the fuel usage would definitely follow the Pareto principle.

IIRC all else being equal, larger cylinders tend to need lower compression. I don't remember why, maybe larger random fluctuations in air-fuel mixture making knocking statistically more likely with bigger cylinders?

(For airplanes vs. car engines, probably other effects are more significant, like higher head temps, poorer mixture due to carburetors, fixed ignition and whatnot.)

The limits on cylinder size at a given compression ratio are dictated by the engine speed, and spread of the flame front in the cylinder. You need the fuel to burn relatively quickly in a gasoline engine, and the fire only spreads at a certain speed (determined by compression ratio and turbulence in the cylinder). If you increase the compression, you decrease the speed of the flame front in the cylinder, and eventually cause incomplete or inefficient combustion.

Note, for folks familiar with auto engines (that are overwhelmingly one spark plug per cylinder), avgas piston engines are overwhelmingly two plugs per cylinder, so there are two flame fronts to cover the wildly larger radius pistons.

An IO-550 is a very common 6-cylinder aircraft engine. 550 cubic inches (just over 9 liters) of displacement from 6 cylinders (5.25” bore x 4.25” stroke, redline typically 2700 RPM).

Having two flame fronts does help a little, but not as much as you'd think, though it depends on the head design. My understanding is that the primary reason for dual plugs in aircraft is to allow for fully-redundant, parallel ignition systems.

I never realised the 550 in IO-550 stood for cubic inches, mindblown!

If you have lots of short flights, with engines being shut down in between (typical general aviation profile), the overhaul limits on turbine engines work against you as you quickly ramp up start-stop cycles, whereas piston engines are limited only by time worked.

The engineering reasons and legal reasons reinforce each other in an endless cycle. Engines are of stone-age complexity because the FAA says they must be, and the FAA says they must be because safety, and the stone-age engines are safe because nobody takes risks and they remain in the stone-age. We're talking about an industry where you can tell which piston airplanes are new because they are fuel injected instead of carbureted!!

This is one of the reasons why I think almost all of the innovation in GA, including modern powerplants, electronic ignitions, advanced avionics electronic systems, and even safety systems, is happening in the Experimental category, not in certified factory-built airplanes. If I owned a Cessna and decided to so much as run a USB charger out to the panel, the FAA would come down on me like a ton of bricks. But I could replace the engine monitor or autopilot on my E/AB category airplane, and the FAA doesn't even care. Hell, I could replace the entire engine with something I invented in my basement, and all I have to do is re-do Phase I testing.

I agree with you in effect, but disagree in terms of mechanism. The FAA doesn’t say you have to use any particular tech; instead they say the burden of proof is on the applicant for an STC to prove an equivalent level of safety and no degradation in performance that would be relevant to certification of the original article. If you want to add a turbo-normalizer to an engine originally certified as normally aspirated, there’s a process to get that approved. Replace one magneto with electronic ignition? There’s at least one group with an STC for that.

(BTW, your USB charger example is a minor modification, able to signed off by an A&P.)

For those unfamiliar with the terminology, A&P stands for airframe and power plant. An A&P mechanic is someone licensed to work on the airframe and engine.

Why doesn't our safety matter?

> Engines are of stone-age complexity because the FAA says they must be, and the FAA says they must be because safety, and the stone-age engines are safe because nobody takes risks and they remain in the stone-age.

The FAA says no such thing. There are modern FADEC piston engines:

* https://www.lycoming.com/engines

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austro_Engine_E4

and you can new planes with them:

* https://www.flyingmag.com/we-fly-diamond-da40-ng/

It's just there are (over) 100K pre-FADEC planes out there with perfectly fine "stone-age" engines, and few people want to spend US$ 40K on a new engine when they can overhaul their current one for half the price when the time comes.

Certifications work on a per-aircraft-type and per-engine-type basis. Converting a single aircraft type to a different engine is possible, but every single combination would need to be tested (I think this also includes flight testing) and certified individually. This is not economic.

So what remains is for the existing fleet to eventually be retired and replaced by newer aircraft that use newer engines. But most light single piston aircraft being sold today still use older engine designs that require leaded fuel! And newer aircraft are so expensive, it's more economical to keep aircraft from the seventies still going. Newer aircraft are expensive because the certification and insurance requirements are extremely expensive. For example, aircraft manufacturers get sued for accidents caused by pilot error on a regular basis, and so they need insurance for that.

"Average cost of manufacturer's liability insurance for each airplane manufactured in the U.S. had risen from approximately $50 per plane in 1962 to $100,000 per plane in 1988, according to a report cited by the Bureau of Labor Statistics,[14] a 2,000-fold increase in 24 years." --https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Aviation_Revitalizatio...

So light aircraft are stuck running ancient engine designs that require leaded fuel.

There is some progress. One manufacturer uses a modern engine that runs on jet fuel (basically a diesel piston engine like in some cars). But that doesn't stop new aircraft being extremely expensive, so it looks like we're still stuck with mostly an old fleet that uses lead for a long time yet.

None of the above answers actually answer your question. Lead was historically used in gasoline for two reasons - 1) to increase the octane rating (a measure of knock resistance) ans 2) to lubricate the valve seats in the cylinder head. There are multiple other chemical additives that can accomplish #1 (the fuel in the article uses one of them). For #2, the solution in the automotive world starting in the 1970s was to use hardened valve seats that didn't require lead in the fuel to lubricate. The actual answer to your question is "because the FAA won't allow it".

Lead isn't actually a requirement for piston-engine aircraft. It's just that most piston engines available with:

  1) world-wide certification 
  2) world-wide base of trained mechanics 
  3) already widely deployed (you can't just "swap" engines on a plane design)

Are piston engines whose original design happened ages ago when leaded gasoline was the cheapest fuel with necessary performance (and that includes not just octane rating, but also things like evaporation rate at given atmospheric pressure - you don't want your fuel tank to explode due to gasoline vapors).

Several newer designs in Europe have been playing around with Diesel engines again, because thanks to being heavier fraction it doesn't have as much evaporation problem of gasoline, and also diesels are by design very tolerant of fuel types. Most importantly, a plane with an aviation diesel engine can just as well use non-ethanol-added diesel from car gas station, or any of the Jet-A1 compatible fuels available on airfields (pretty sure everything that isn't accidental leftover of SR-71 blackbird operation will work just fine).

>also diesels are by design very tolerant of fuel types

While combustion process is tolerant, modern high-pressure pumps not so much. I don't think you can run automotive engine on Jet-A without detrimental effects on lifetime of injection system (as it uses fuel as lubricant). Does these aviation diesels use some specially hardened pumps?

There are substitutes that work in most engines. The others can be re-engined. Continuing to spray poison should not be in the table. But plane owners are rich and have money and time to lobby.

Most [piston] engines? Yes. Most gallons of avgas bought per year? No (or at least until G100UL has an all-model certification to replace 100LL). I posted more details in a sibling comment here.

(I want nothing more than to be able to buy G100UL.)

https://www.aopa.org/advocacy/advocacy-briefs/regulatory-bri...

Notice "not poisoning children" is not on their list of requirements. No, just that it doesn't cost you any money.

If I just took TEL and sprayed it over your house, I'd be arrested and have to pay tens of thousands for remediation. But do it in a plane? No problem!

You don't have to fly. You choose to poison us.

Most car engines? Yes with the exception of those with ethanol mixed into them. For aircraft engines it's a definite no. Several accidents caused by putting pump gas in aircraft.

I'm personally getting kind of sick of "it's not practical" as an excuse for why the general population has to suffer being poisoned and having their environment destroyed. Maybe we just don't need so many pilots and planes if it is so impractical to train and fly them?

We can't solve everything all at once. We're simply not that rich.

The reason leaded avgas isn't solved yet is because by itself it's a pretty small problem as far as things that are poisoning us and out planet go.

Obviously we're making progress, because people still care, but it's not getting resources in the same way that clean electrical energy is because it's a much smaller problem.

I wouldn't be surprised if there are some pilots who learned in a small (prop) jet at this point. Such planes are not cheap, but they do exist and it's not as though the airline wants you to have specifically piston experience because the airline only owns jets anyway.

You can rent a small prop plane like a C152 for less than $100 an hour in the US in some places.

I would be surprised if there's a turbine out there that can be rented for less than $1000.

There are plenty of commercial passenger prop planes flying today. For example, Billy Bishop Airport (YTZ) on Toronto Island only permits prop planes because of the close proximity of the airport to the city, and nearly 3 million passengers pass through YTZ each year, mostly with Porter, a regional airline.

Maybe this isn't obvious to frosted-flakes, or to some other readers:

The propeller on a prop plane can be attached to either a piston or a jet engine. (Or mostly in smaller or experimental planes, an electric motor)

So, in the example of Porter, those are Dash-8s and that's a jet engine. Yes it has the propellers on the front like those old-timey aeroplanes you saw in black and white, but you'll notice that the propellers are on the front of a jet engine. See, the engine needs spinning blades inside it to work, compressing air to run the engine, but you can choose whether to expend the resulting energy on producing yet more spinning motion for propellers (a turboprop engine) or to shove lots of fast air out of the back (a turbofan engine)

A jet engine does not use leaded gasoline, that would be crazy. Whether it is spinning a propeller or just shoving fast moving air out the back, the jet engine runs on kerosene. This is still nasty stuff, but it does not have lead in it.

Funny, I had a vague understanding of that before writing my comment, but somehow I glossed right over it and equated props with piston engine.

Technically speaking, the engines you are referring to are turbine (not jet). There are two types of turbine engines: turbojets and turboprops. The first ones produce a significant portion of the thrust via jet exhaust (even though high bypass jets are close to prop engines). Even turboprops (like the popular Garrets and PT6's) produce about 10 percent of their thrust through jet exhaust.

To be even more technical, the difference between turbine and piston engines is in the combustion chamber: open combustion in the case of a turbine and closed in the case of a piston.

Finally, there are turbine engines that run just fine on LL100 (leaded avgas). Garrets, for example. One can even mix gas and jet-A in those. It is not recommended to run avgas for more than 1000 hours though due to potential issues with lead deposits. Some military jets engines are designed to run on almost anything combustible except maybe coal dust (I am exaggerating somewhat, of course).

This problem is purely a result of the engine certification regime, leading to decades-old designs that rely on lead often being the only viable options.

Just relax the certifications. It's surely less dangerous to the overall population than continuing to spew lead.

The article we're discussing is about a workable substitute for 100LL and how the FAA has dragged its feet for over a decade in evaluating it.

IMHO they should have mandated lead-free decades ago with a 5 year notice so people could upgrade engines and such. What has happened instead is a long road trying to find a replacement for leaded fuel that can be used in existing aircraft engines without modification. That approach leads to corruption, as those developing solutions to the problem want to patent a new fuel, have it mandated and get a nice monopoly of GA fuel. That is not good for the industry at all.

On paper I was a fan of isobutanol but that didn't pan out either.

I think drop-in replacement fuel is the most realistic approach. The lifespan of aircraft and of some aircraft engines mean that your suggestion would require a large number of engine replacements and make it prohibitively expensive for the whole of GA.

This approach clearly can work, and is only not working because of an incompetent administrator.

Yes, it would be crazy if rich hobbyists had to stop poisoning kids near airports and either give up their hobby or pay engine replacements.

"It will be a heck of a lot more effective"

I do write letters to my representatives and such. Unfortunately, I think either action (writing letters or commenting here) have near zero impact. In my experience, you get a canned response. If you're lucky, that response actually talks about the concerns you raised, but usually is just loosely related and is mostly fluff. Sometimes it's completely unrelated. Sometimes they simply ignore you and never respond at all.

It feels like more of our government is broken or perverted than is actually functioning correctly and beneficially.

My own MP (I'm in the UK) has been willing to respond to my letters on climate change but not actually do anything. My plan, when time permits, is to publish the responses, and especially the lack of responses. Public bodies hate bad publicity. Maybe you can do the same.

I actually contacted an investigative journalist about some of the problems we were having (rights violations, judicial incompetence, police lying in court). Basically, the response was that they'd like the info and documents if it fits with a larger story, but that there were so many bigger issues that this story wouldn't be published by itself. Also they ran a story about the incompetence of the magistrates in the prior year or so (magistrates here don't have to pass the Bar or have a legal degree).

> It feels like more of our government is broken or perverted than is actually functioning correctly and beneficially.

Yes. It’s my understanding the goal of the US government is to maintain the status quo. It doesn’t much matter that the status quo is a Kafka-esque dystopian nightmare. It’s working as intended.

In other words: I’m closing this bug report; working as intended

True. I guess the real bug is that we are generally lied to by teachers and other adults while growing up. So we expect this just, righteous, effective system, only to realize it's full of incompetence, contradictions, and even corruption.

I mean, I tried to “drop some truth” on my high school students when I was a teacher, but reactionary administrators and politicians (and sometimes parents) don’t like it when you try to “brainwash” students (I.e. say anything other than how the current system is natural and perfect).

I think that’s a symptom too. The root cause seems to be the notion that children must be “protected from the truth” so they can lead a carefree youth.

Then kids turn 18 and the mask drops and — at least for me — the number of WTFs is never ending. I’m 46yro and I still don’t understand why I was told so many lies… except of course I do understand: adults don’t want to explain their shittyness to a bunch of kids.

Just imagine if our collective parents had to deal with a generational outcry demanding they stop fucking around, stop stealing from our future, stop lying, etc.

Society as we know it would end, necessarily replaced by something more just.

Can’t have that! The status quo it is then. FML; YMMV

You can argue that either is a side effect.

Hiding the status quo is something you'd do to maintain the status quo, just as much as not knowing the status quo reduces your wants to get away from it

So what’s the bug? How can we identify and fix the problem?

> It feels like more of our government is broken or perverted than is actually functioning correctly and beneficially.

I don't mean to excuse any of the B.S. that's going down, but I feel it's important to take the long view, to see the thing in the light of history. Not for nothing is it said, "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.", eh?

1. the history of democracy is very short, it's no foregone conclusion that it is the best option regardless of pithy quotes from Churchill or what we would like to believe (and yes I know that "best" and "worst" are doing a lot of work in our statements)

2. there are many implementations of democracy possible and extant, so even if we think democracy is the ideal government that is still no defense of the US

I would say it's the best option so far. Conventional wisdom holds that autocracy is better, if-and-only-if you have a good autocrat. It's said the old women wept when the King of Bhutan decreed Democracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhutanese_democracy

If we're being honest, what reply would actually be expected other than some kind of canned response? Each representative has around 750,000 citizens to represent -- if even a tiny fraction of them write a letter, the representative is going to be inundated. Some senators have 20,000,000 citizens they represent.

I'd like to see an attempt to go back to the original 30,000 per rep. We have the technology now to make that entirely feasible.

Often times I am writing to state reps who represent closer to the 30k number.

Also, the reps themselves don't often answer letters, but have aides that can do that based on the reps position.

>"I'd like to see an attempt to go back to the original 30,000 per rep. We have the technology now to make that entirely feasible."

I agree that congresspeople and senators represent too many people to do so accurately, but enlarging the congress would cause other problems. Devolving power to the states (and municipalities) would likely be more effective.

Mike Lee's office always responds to me, but I've yet to get a response that says anything other than "I disagree with you."

lol that's absurd, it's not his job to disagree with you. his job is to listen to you and represent you.

He obviously cannot agree with everyone. He has his point of view, sold that to a majority of voters, who elected him.

I'd rather hear that my representative disagrees with me than receive some BS noncommital answer that dodges the issue or tries to straddle both sides of an issue.

The fact that the representative's office clearly says it disagrees is great! It means they understand constituents' positions well enough to know whether they are representing their electorate.

The bland, nothing replies are a sign that they're not even bothering to register your opinion.

No, he can absolutely disagree when it comes to political questions. That's literally what they're elected on and the point of indirect democracy is to have dedicated people who can exercise their own judgement using their expertise and resources alongside reacting to constituent concerns. And constituent concerns are not in fact always valid for that matter. Or one set of constituent priorities may conflict with another set. Balancing that kind of thing is a political question. An honest rep's office should certainly take some time to respond to an actual letter and if they don't agree or just plain can't do something give a brief reason as to why (fresh for a new issue raised, could be canned if it's a frequent question but should still represent updated reasoning). But doing so is not wrong. If enough constituents disagree with that, the remedy is to vote that rep out (which would hopefully be easier for outrageous cases like this which do not fall along any typical partisan lines).

I wonder how large the democratic deficit would be if the response from any given representative across the country read something a little more like this:

"We [insert office] are excited by your interest and have taken your stance into our records. While [office] must remain entirely impartial, we can inform you that, unfortunately, as of now our records indicate that your stance is only shared by a minority (45%) of the vote suggestions and support letters we have received. If you feel strongly and wish to alter [office's] actions towards this, please continue your support by gaining interest in your community."

Perhaps people participate more under this different system.

I can't speak to the way the FAA works - as I believe those are appointed positions - for elected officials, every time you write a letter, or a make a phone call and are a constituent of that official, someone is writing down the subject, and your preferences about the matter. And the more people who do it and bring it up, the more time the representative spends on that topic.

Try leaving a review on Google maps. It works every time

That has more to do with problems of carb icing and similar on legacy engines. It's very expensive to get regulatory approval for new engines and even more so to then get approvals to retrofit them to legacy or historical aircraft. Unfortunately if you put regular pump gasoline in an aircraft you are going to have serious problems. Not least because of the bioethanol mixed in which will degrade the pipes.

> It's very expensive to get regulatory approval for new engines and even more so to then get approvals to retrofit them to legacy or historical aircraft.

"The problems caused by rules we oppose upon ourselves are so bad that we can't solve the real biochemical issues caused by airborne lead" may not be the compelling argument you think it is.

> Unfortunately if you put regular pump gasoline in an aircraft you are going to have serious problems. Not least because of the bioethanol mixed in which will degrade the pipes.

There are plenty of fueling options other than driving down to Shell and picking up some E10. There are also readily available fuel lines that aren't degraded by ethanol.

I seem to recall also issues with typical automobile fuel vaporising too easily at lower pressure, which isn't a problem in a car which likely won't be driving above 4000m ASL... but 4000m is nothing special for even cheap (comparably) non-ultralight plane.

The FFA also tells me that because I took an low dose antidepressant in my teens for anxiety, I can't get a private pilot's license without either lying or paying tens of thousands of dollars in fees to prove that I am not suicidal. So not the most up to date organization.

Now imagine what effect that has on commercial pilots who are already working, and want to seek medical help for mental health issues. Risk losing your medical, and your job, or just carry on as if everything's fine?

Meanwhile Andreas lubitz was known to have depression and be suicidal but was given the greenlight to continue flying.

The special issuance process for medical after the use of anti-depressants is not as bad as described for cases where a medical should reasonably be (specially-)issued.

If you're interested in flying, I'd look more closely into the SI process. https://www.faa.gov/about/office_org/headquarters_offices/av...

I'm in the same boat as the GP. Talked to a few AMEs about my options back in 2019. SI involves thousands of dollars per year and and only applies to a few relatively old SSRI drugs. Ideally they want you to discontinue your psychiatric drug treatment – great job, FAA.

There's also the BasicMed rules. You can fly with BasicMed instead of 3rd class, but you need to have had a 3rd class to get the BasicMed, so I suggested to the AME that I could drop the drugs for 2 months, get the 3rd class, and then immediately apply for the BasicMed and hop back on whatever I was taking in the first place. One guy refused to talk to me after that.

Wait, you can fly with 3rd class? If the classes are the same as in europe...

I had to take 2nd class for gliders (1st class is required for ATPL/CPL only, I believe)

3rd class or BadicMed for private pilot, 2nd class for Commercial, 1st for Airline.

> so I suggested to the AME that I could drop the drugs for 2 months, get the 3rd class, and then immediately apply for the BasicMed and hop back on whatever I was taking in the first place. One guy refused to talk to me after that.

Unfortunately, despite what their flowcharts say, it actually doesn't work like that if you've been taking the prescription for any length of time. They don't actually follow their little flowchart. You will need the full special issuance.

What you described you can get away with ONLY IF you've never applied before and they have no record of you ever being on the medication. That AME likely did you a huge favor by not talking to you after that.

Technically, `hopping back on' you would still be violating the law because the Basic Med allows you to self-certify but the rules are the same. On the other hand you can pay for SI once and then switch to Basic Med (since the rules are that you had a valid 3rd class medical before switching to Basic Med). There are many AMEs around, talk to another one but do not reveal your plans after you get the medical.

The basic interaction model with government should be “answer their legitimate questions truthfully, but do not volunteer extraneous information.”

I'm going through the process right now. It is every bit as bad as described.

They do this to everyone with ADHD as well. They don't understand the condition and have a lot of weird 1950s assumptions. You can't be medicated and fly and if you're diagnosed but unmedicated you need to go through extremely expensive testing. As a result everyone just hides it.

Yet the (military) Air Force uses modafinil?

Presumably to promote wakefulness, not for its benefits for ADHD.

The point being the medication has no effect on ones ability to safely operate an aircraft.

The issue is, yes, there are ADHD cases that are debilitating but they typically don't even make it out of training. If you're managing the condition through therapy and potentially medication there isn't an issue but the FAA fails to recognize that neurodivergence isn't binary.

A significant chunk of the pilot population has ADHD, it's common enough to basically be a meme in the community because the career/hobby is especially appealing to those that have it.

When military considered it fine to give amphetamines to pilots, it also considered it fine to run soldiers through still hot ground zero of nuclear explosion (so hot the boots would melt), or purposefully release radionuclides over american cities to research the effects.

Military isn't necessarily a good benchmark for sane ideas.

And before they switched to modafinil, they gave pilots (wait for it...) amphetamines.

It's total nonsense and the entire aeromedical division should be razed and rebuilt from the ground up.

I've got my PPL and refuse to go to see a psychiatrist or anyone who might diagnose me simply for the fact that if I'm told I'm "depressed" and might have to medicated for it, I could ironically lose the one hobby in the world that makes me happiest.

Same. I'd love a therapist and sleep study. But alas.

I don't think it's a matter of being "up to date" but rather about being risk adverse. There's much more downside for a false negative (approving someone who is suicidal) than false positive (disapproving someone who isn't). So they will err on having more false positives.

Bureaucracies tend toward being risk adverse, and it can lead to bad incentives that create inefficiency and lack of innovation. As the saying goes, "nobody ever got fired for hiring IBM."

I would say the risks of having a driver’s license and driving into people is pretty similar to the risk of flying a small plane to the general public but the red tape is not there.

Fair point, but I think the risk of not giving people drivers licenses is quite a bit greater. Not too many people fly their Cessna's to work. But prohibiting people from driving would have a major impact on the economy. There's also a larger political risk since the share of people who would be unhappy with such a policy would be orders of magnitude larger.

This is the kind of crap that makes me think the US is in real trouble. It’s like “quagmire” has replaced “competency” across all our institutions, and there’s no escape.

There needs to be some kind of "pay for delay" scheme. If a federal agency takes 2 years to make a decision because they're really worried about getting sued for making the wrong decision, they should have to pay for the fact the decision took so long.

That way they can trade off speed of decisions vs quality of decisions.

The problem with "pay for delay" for government agencies is that it is passed on to the taxpayers. The FAA won't go out of business or face any "bailouts" as such, it will simply result in a higher cost to taxpayers.

ETA: Additionally, I don't believe any members of the FAA are elected, although possibly some are appointed by elected officials? Point being - taxpayers pay more, taxpayers get angry, taxpayers can't vote people causing them out of office for their inaction, FAA continues to do nothing

These programs are ultimately run by people.. So you can force them out (hard), or second-best, give their fiefdom to others and mar their record to prevent them for future big projects.

Who would have the power to force them out? I guess potentially the elected officials perhaps, which I was mentioning with the appointments bit. It's something for sure, but it's a step removed from the people footing the bill being able to do something about it

Part of why forcing gov employees out is hard is you have to go through hurdles like showing severe measurable underperforming, think lowest-quartile, which can be tricky, onerous, and little reward. That's why I quickly drift more towards killing their incentives, which in turn is effectively controlled by annual congressional budgets and what parts they get.

Then again, when the average US senator is generally disconnected from what's happening, controlling via the budget has its own challenges...

The Administrator is appointed for a 5year term.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Aviation_Administratio...

Sure, taxpayers pay ultimately, but that's not the important part. The important part is that taxpayers currently don't care. They don't really have a stake in this. They are indifferent, because they don't feel the huge torrent of opportunity cost of a slow regulatory agency going down the drain. Pay for delay would make this visible. It'd immediately help to put pressure on politicians, and that will make the executive branch much much much more responsive to these issues.

Hmm, I get what you're saying, but it sounds like an "attention tax" at that point, which seems like an unsustainable approach -- assuming voters even realized that these additional fines existed and were coming out of their taxes, the gist of this seems to be, if you want to stop people who aren't doing their job correctly, fine another group (citizens), who will then contact a third group (legislators) to do something about the first group. This same could be expanded to seemingly any part of the government moving to slowly, but at what point do citizens say "hey we're tired of paying for you all not doing your job, and why are we only finding out about it by being fined?"

While certainly the taxpayers pay it ultimately, the function is to compensate those who take up the struggle with bureaucracy.

And yes, I think it would be good to put more concrete dollar numbers next to these lengthy processes. It would help legibility by making consequences clear(er) plus if there's a slight compounding by time,then it incentivizes resolutions. (Instead of the current system where applicants basically have one recourse, which is trying to sue the government.)

Federal agencies generally have complete legal immunity for their decisions. Concerns over getting sued are not the reason for delays.

That's not entirely true - agencies get sued and loose lawsuits all the time. It would be accurate to say that while most people working for government don't have immunity, it's pretty rare for them to get affected personally* so effectively it is immunity.

Lack of oversight and accountability is the real reason for delays. They get away with it because no one holds them accountable for actually producing something in a timely manner.

*I wish I could find it - there is an example of some government employees who were held personally liable for some environmental violations - despite them complaining to upper management that they needed to be addressed. Was pretty f'd up. I think they were civilian employees in the military (for some reason I'm thinking Air Force but can't dig it up at the moment). So if you are low enough on the totem pole your but may get in a sling - but it's amazing how little the upper echelons seem to take hits.

One cannot "loose" a lawsuit, but they can "lose"

Is there a way to charge government agency's in a way that accomplishes anything? If the faa is fined it will just be paid by the taxpayer, it's not like they have a revenue stream to worry about. And if you charge them enough to make it hard to do their job with their budget then that is just counter productive?

Don't charge. Your thinking in normal terms. They don't care about charges or fines because they don't create money in the first place. If you want to hit a government agency where it hurts, cut their budget by the amount you would fine someone else. That is about the only thing that will get their attention!

I mean, the faa has no competition. If they are already incompetent and you cut their budget, won't they just be more incompetent? Is there any examples of a government agency reforming itself under budget cuts to be more effective? It doesn't sound plausible to me

Sounds like we should change the way we hire people in government to increase competency

I would go as far as saying there should be a elite govt branch that has the power to dissolve and reform all these anemic regulatory bodies like they do with police forces every once in a while. That should be congress but good luck getting them to do anything, they should be on the chopping block too. I think anyone who's actually competent probably just gets frustrated and leaves

>just gets frustrated and leaves

I feel this in my bones. I'm starting to feel this way towards living in the US in general

"they should have to pay" - who is "they" in your postulation? Government doesn't create anything; it's funded by confiscation of wealth from its citizens (also known by the cuter and more acceptable term: taxation).

Now if you want to tweak it to their budget should get cut the longer they take to make a decision - that's something government agencies would *actually* pay attention to. About the only thing, actually.

The executive branch only ignores congress because congress refuses to do their job. They have the power of the purse but are loathe to use it. The 17th amendment was an utter disaster enabling the morass we are now in.

Totally. Meanwhile China throws caution to the wind and innovates like we used to.

The most important line of this article doesn't even pertain to aviation directly:

> Some perspective: In 1957, the U.S. hadn’t even launched a satellite. Twelve years later, Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. So unleaded avgas is a harder problem than a lunar landing? Perhaps you can enlighten me in the comments section.

It's happening everywhere, all industries. This infatuation with impeding progress in the name of organizational justification, budget numbers, or whatever - it'll be the death of us if we don't get it under control.

There's a whole lot of conservatism driving it. I'm not talking about the political ideology, I'm talking about the basic idea of conserving the same way of doing things "because that's what we've always done" or "it was good enough for our grandparents" or "why change what isn't broken"

None of these things are good excuses to keep beating the same dead horse, that's not how progress is made. I also know that changing too many things at once can lead to issues so I'm not advocating for upending everything at once, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't start changing what needs to be changed.

Perhaps this is just my perspective and we may not agree where that start lies.

This conservatism of which you speak is just risk intolerance, or less charitably, an unwillingness to accept responsibility. We're stuck with old processes, byzantine committe review for simple things, expensive PE stamped drawings for a storm drain, all because nobody is willing to give it a try and be responsible for the result. And we actively crap on anyone who does want to give it a try as being reckless.

Risk intolerance, diffusion of responsibly, things like that as an abstract concepts tends to thunderous applause around here. So maybe a mirror would help us solve the problem.

bias toward short term risk avoidance versus long term risk avoidance. (hence status quo bias, also "nobody got fired for buying IBM", etc.)

what's needed is a meta-level risk budget and sane risk management, and in case of conservative industries (medicine, aviation, nuclear, blablabla) there should be a calculated and constant push to bias against stagnation, without fucking up the otherwise great safety record.

(of course this usually means a bit more in costs of managing changes, but that should be looked at in the perspective of opportunity costs of not changing to better processes/technology/structure/etc.)

I've always been curious about what the bureaucracy is actually doing that takes all this time. I would love to see an hour-by-hour breakdown. When my county says I need a permit to install a water heater or whatever, and that permit (a piece of paper, just to remind everyone) is going to take 6 months to make, I would LOVE to have a full work breakdown showing why this takes 6 months. What people are doing what actions at what times, where the critical path of typing this piece of paper ends in 6 months? I would love to know why it takes decades to build 5 miles of train tracks. What people are doing what actual activities in what order that adds up to 10+ years?

When the execs at your software company asks you to explain a 3 week estimate to build a feature, you can sit down with your project manager, and build a GANNT chart or whatever, showing engineer A and engineer B doing design work for 1 week, implementation for another week, and testing the third week. In more detail, you could break down every team member's time spent by the hour actually writing docs, typing in code, waiting for it to compile, organizing field testing, and so on, and you can show exactly what physical activities result in the 3 week estimate.

I suspect if government agencies (or big companies) were required to produce an hour-by-hour breakdown of what individual people physically did through a project, you'd see a lot of "blocked on other team A finishing project B" or "waiting for executive Y to sign document Z" and also a lot of "picking my nose or playing golf, not doing my job."

I think this sort of transparency would be good for governing institutions. It would be far easier for the populace to hold them accountable

>> Meanwhile China throws caution to the wind and innovates like we used to.

Not in aviation they don't. Why? Because there are two certification bodies, FAA and EASA. Anyone who wants to fly anything in the world has to certify his tech with those two (unless it is used purely domestic, but than it can hardly be called aerospace or aviation). That includes Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, European and North / South American manufacturers.

The reason why certification standards are what they are is safety. Aviation became one of the safest industries for a reason. The 737 MAX debacle showed pretty well what happens when those standards are not adhered to. Is it a slow process? Sure it is, but it is what it is for very valid reasons.

ICAO is the certifying authority, FAA and EASA (and hundreds of other national certification bodies) have agreements that allow for the certification results done on the national level to be accepted by ICAO. I totally agree about the significance of strict standards.

This is the problem with “regulations are written in blood”. You need blood to unwrite them. But you can kill bloodlessly forever.

>> Some perspective: In 1957, the U.S. hadn’t even launched a satellite. Twelve years later, Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. So unleaded avgas is a harder problem than a lunar landing? Perhaps you can enlighten me in the comments section.

The Apollo program also cost $25.8 billion between 1960 and 1973, or approx. $257 billion adjusted for inflation in 2020[1]. That's a full 5% of total government spending. That's an astronomical! amount of money to spend on a seemingly frivolous goal of upstaging the Spviet Union.

[1]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S026596462...

This is normal, except when we get into a real war.

But HN's first reaction to any discomfort or unfairness is legislation. There are so many threads where the top comment is frothing with legislation demands.

You can encourage GAO to investigate: https://www.gao.gov/about/what-gao-does/fraud

Remember to keep it polite, brief and to the point. This isn't the time for a three page discourse filled with emoji and slang - keep it professional and to a five sentence paragraph.

Ditto for your congress critter. Unlike with GAO, paper letters carry the most weight here, followed by phone calls. Forget email or other electronic forms - the traditional methods will get the most traction! Indeed phone calls seem to carry the most weight - I have gotten follow up every time I have phoned in to bring something up; not so much with other methods.

This is such a mess, and it highlights how ineffective the FAA has gotten. I don't want to hear them act like this is an "abundance of caution" when this very same organization pushed the 737 MAX right through. Maybe the problem is that George hasn't greased enough palms?

Pilots WANT unleaded. It's better for the engines, but more importantly, it nullifies concerns from the general public about lead emissions causing health concerns. Which isn't to say those concerns are even scientifically valid, but given the option most pilots would gladly pay a bit more to be good neighbors.

It's just beyond frustrating to watch.

I disagree that unleaded is better for engines. These engines were designed for leaded gas; the lead serves a necessary lubricating function. That doesn't mean there will not be an alternative, or even a possible modification to the engines.

What little lead fouling I have seen has been on plugs from running too rich a mix, and that can usually be "burned off" easily, or cleaned manually.

Lead used to serve a necessary lubricating function way back in the 1930s-1940s before the invention of Stellite valve seats, and other hardened alloys for valves. Any aircraft engine that has been either built or overhauled in your or my lifespan already has hardened valve seats installed, or it is a fairly minor procedure to replace them as a part of a top-end overhaul, which often does not even require the engine to be removed.

A far worse problem than lead fouling, which just electrically shorts a spark plug and results in power loss and annoying vibration, is lead deposit preignition, where hot bits of lead oxide deposits adhered to the piston act as preignition site triggers, resulting in detonation. Despite the violent sounding name, it will typically go unnoticed by the pilot unless they have automated cylinder head temperature monitoring and alerting, which the majority of piston powered aircraft do not have. At cruise power it can destroy an engine within a minute or so.

https://resources.savvyaviation.com/wp-content/uploads/artic...

The notion that lead was good for engines was always just propaganda. One of the main reasons engines last so much longer today than they once did is the lack of lead in the fuel. (Lubricants are better, too, but are also no longer damaged by lead contamination.)

General Motors, in originally promoting leaded gasoline, was aware of this at the time. They did not see reduced engine lifetime as a problem to be solved.

Bureaucracies have huge incentive to keep any status quo as it is. Any change is potentially risky.

This is something we can possibly solve by not punishing state servants as harshly if they make a decision and something goes wrong. "Something went wrong" is a bad metric for firing people. There should be a pattern of bad behavior before something like that is done.

> This is something we can possibly solve by not punishing state servants as harshly if they make a decision and something goes wrong

The way things are going over here in the EU the reverse is true, as in state servants are incentivised to not walk even a millimetre outside of the chosen, legal path for fear of prison time.

Now, one would think that the "legal path" is a very large and broad one, but the truth is that it is all in the eye of the beholder, that assessment all depends on who holds the reins of power and if that state servant is on the "good" side (with "us") or on the "bad" side (with "them"). At least that's how things happen in the Eastern part of the EU.

More exactly, and as a hypothetical example: one cannot just choose the best tool for the job (or the best services for the job) as a result of a public procurement process because it all depends on the offered price.

Doesn't matter if the the opportunity cost savings generating by choosing the slightly more expansive tool/service are an order of magnitude larger compared to said price difference (i.e. between the cheaper but worst model, compared to the more expansive but better model) a state servant in my country can get actual prison time for choosing the more expensive (but better) tool/service.

So what happens for state servants that do actually want to get something done while avoiding prison time is to precisely "manicure" the technical requirements that are part of the public procurement process so that the better but the more expensive product wins. It's borderline illegal (and some other public public servants are using this same tactic for really nefarious reasons) but that's how things are.

That last part is why you will find products and packages that have weird features that don't really seem to be necessary or in align with the rest of the system.

Because you can require that weird feature and then get the "more expensive" product.

Indeed this is a major problem in public service. Everyone from your local street police officer up the the president of the USA. Nobody cares when things are done correctly and go well, but everyone cares when things go wrong, even if (the hope is) the occurrence is rare. Thus, the entire bureaucracy is setup toward this.

No, they're always changing for the worse. New regulations get piled up and adopted faster than ever. More procedures and paperwork constantly get into pipelines.

When people's job is do X, they will continue to do X even if X is not needed.

So, I get the frustration with bureaucracy. I'm an environmental engineer and I deal with analogies to this a lot. But to be honest, this seems like a non-issue to me either way. Like, sure, lead is bad, but one should take into account mass and concentrations before reaching for the ban hammer.

There are so few aircraft running leaded gas I can't imagine that environmental lead concentrations, could ever be at the right order of magnitude to be a problem for anyone(except probably AT airfields near fueling stations and maintenance areas). These aren't typically areas where children get exposed.

I think you're greatly underestimating the number of GA / Piston aircraft flying.

At my school, we have ~10 aircraft flying every day, 8-12 hours a day depending on the weather. Most of these flights happen over prime, in production farmland, or on the edges of the nearby town which has 8 schools at a minimum.

Now we're one of probably 5 aviation schools within a 50 mile radius, all of whom are operating at similar or greater profiles.

I'm sure the individual impact is small, but for every jumbo jet there's something like 3-5 piston aircraft in operation.

There are 220,000 GA planes in the US. The number of jetliners isn't clear, but it's something like 45k flights in the US a day (some of those are doubled up).

https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/by_the_numbers/

But the key number is there 25,506,000 GENERAL AVIATION FLIGHT HOURS PER YEAR, which is almost exactly the amount of 100LL used a year (technically some GA flights are jet).

These GA statistics seem to include Aerial Work, so it includes a considerable number of turbine powered aircraft (most helicopters for instance.)

This Excel(!) document breaks GA hours down between types of aircraft: https://www.faa.gov/data_research/aviation_data_statistics/g...

From that document, here are the estimated total hours flown by type of general aviation aircraft:

Fixed wing piston: 12.9 million

Fixed wing turbine (turboprop + turbojet): 5.6 million

Helicopter (turbine): 1.8 million

Helicopter (pison): 0.6 million

Aside, if you compare Chart4 and Chart5 in that document, you can see that although piston aircraft are far more numerous, on average they spend a lot more time on the ground than turbine powered aircraft.

Two papers for your reading:

* March 2022 - https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2118631119 - "Half of US population exposed to adverse lead levels in early childhood"

* October 2011 - https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/10.1289/ehp.1003231 A Geospatial Analysis of the Effects of Aviation Gasoline on Childhood Blood Lead Levels

The two papers (plus others) taken together suggest that the impact is measurable (paper 2), perhaps to the tune of one or two IQ points on average per person exposed (me drawing a line from paper 1).

Granted, the latter point is my extrapolation, but there's enough of a foundation now for policy decisions to be made in advance of explicit research connecting these dots.

On the first paper, roughly half the US population is >40yo, so this could well be talking about things that stopped being a problem in the 80's.

Yes, I haven't read that paper but the abstract even notes that the effect is "disproportionately endured by those born between 1951 and 1980".

The largest result in the avgas paper, for children living within 500m of an airport, put their lead levels at 0.043 micrograms/dl higher than the general population.

From this paper[1], "An increase in blood lead from 10 to 20 micrograms/dl was associated with a decrease of 2.6 IQ points". So while there is an impact on lead levels, it is not nearly large enough to lead to the loss of 1-2 IQ points.

I'm not saying we shouldn't get rid of leaded avgas, but it accounts for about 0.1% of gasoline used in the US so the impact will be much smaller than banning leaded fuel for cars was.

[1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8162884/

Just for one example, Seattle has a lake right in the middle of town in a bowl with tens of thousands of people working and living right around it, and that lake is used as a seaplane airfield with aircraft landing and taking off every few minutes throughout the day.

A lot of small airports are smack in the middle of residential or other populated areas.

The problem is the standard is that lead in any concentration is bad. So folks swarm pink elephant issues like this because they affect a small group of people and are cheap.

If you want to be angry about government inaction on lead, the “hear no evil, see no evil” respect to lead paint and soil contamination is the thing.

The article isn't directly about banning leaded fuel. It's about expanding approval of unleaded fuel.

You're right that from a environmental/health standpoint, it's not a giant issue. Lead emissions from general aviation are highly localized, and generally within air quality limits - with peaking areas limited to within airport limits themselves (https://www.epa.gov/regulations-emissions-vehicles-and-engin...).

But this rant is more about bureaucracy cockups. The FAA is launching another lead-free fuel initiative while sitting on approvals for an existing lead-free fuel. That's a waste of money, and it's not a sign of the competence/lack of corruption that we should expect from the FAA.

I absolutely love Paul Bertorelli's communication style. It comes across perfectly in his writing and in his YouTube videos. Little things like:

> To keep you from opening a vein, I have blurred the chronology a little.

Might not sit well with some people, but says so much in just a few words.

> Might not sit well with some people, but says so much in just a few words

It also makes it useless for someone curious about bringing this to a legislator's or senior administration official's attention.

Eh, I disagree. If someone is going to disregard the issue because of some slightly colorful language in an opinion piece, they never really cared in the first place.

Weird how "tone" never seems to be a concern for the gun lobby or "pro life" crowd (where tone includes arson/bombing/sniper attacks)

A lot of Paul's work is safety related; in that context I find morbid humor quite appropriate. You're less likely to forget the lesson about flying over water with that hard-hitting gag about unintentionally becoming a U-Boat commander.

I was mentally imagining him talking with his hands through the entire article.

So, those chemtrail guys were right when they said: "The government helps spread substances that make us more stupid"?!

Kinda; chemtrails are far fetched conspiracy theories, the real ignorance and mind control or whatever is happening right under their noses.

Chemtrails are absolutely a conspiracy theory. However, they are not far-fetched given how many programs the US government has run that affected the health of its own citizens and members of the armed forces.

Still dumbfounded Richard Helms died a free man

Well fluorine for sure.

The real question is, what happens to the frogs!

Probably some missing nuance. That said, it seems pretty indefensible that it’s taken the FAA more than a decade to reach a decision on an unleaded avgas alternative.

Nuance like what? He's spot on imo.

The nuance is it's lose-lose for the FAA bureaucrats if they approve an unleaded gas and something later happens.

There is NO risk to the bureaucrats if they keep stalling on unleaded and let everyone run 100LL for all eternity.

> There is NO risk to the bureaucrats if they keep stalling on unleaded and let everyone run 100LL for all eternity

This is oversimplifying. Yes, there is a bureaucratic bias towards inaction. But stonewalling is an action. The GAO audit the author posits could very well endgame key decision makers' careers.

Nobody in government gets fired for inaction...

Politicians can, but it is VERY rare, and NEVER over something that affects a very small portion of the population.

If you have an example of anyone getting a career ended because of a GAO audit, I'd love to see it!

Yeah, there is no excuse for not having an unleaded avgas by now. Just approve one already, octane can be raised by many other means, and aviation engines are rebuilt all the time (every 200 hours you need to xray the crankshaft to ensure there are no cracks), so if parts need to be replaced it would have been done already anyway. Sure sometimes airplane owners skip some of that (the odds of a cracked crankshaft are low enough and the rule only applies to specific uses which you can not do), but even still it is safe to say if they had the fuel approved 10 years ago most airports wouldn't even have 100ll anymore because the demand would be so low.

If it's like most things, it's a matter of prioritization. Trying to maximize positive impact with a limited set of resources forces you to prioritize.

Sure it would be great to get rid of unleaded aviation gas, but ensuring we don't get a repeat of the 737-MAX issue might take priority.

Where did you here that crankshafts need to be x-rayed every 200 hours? That would mean completely tearing an engine down... I'm fairly certain this almost never happens.

I'm assuming he is referring to the manufacturer's recommendations and not what is required to keep the engine airworthy.

You can write in basically anything as a manufacturer, doesn't mean it is binding unless it is an official communication. For example, I have a dirt bike that states to replace the piston every 10 hours of operation.

Not even fighter jet engines have such requirements, and those consider 300 hours overhauls to be short.

I've owned multiple different piston-engined airplanes for the last 25 years. No mainstream aircraft engine has this requirement nor recommendation.

It doesn't. They might do that during an IRAN (Inspect and Repair As Necessary) which is essentially a full engine teardown, easily 5 figures. Certainly not done every 200 hours.

Maybe it's a conflation of many piston aircraft engine manufacturers' recommendation for a TBO (time between overhauls), which is often around 2000 hours. This is essentially a full rebuild of the engine. However, in many cases it's not regulatory and more of a suggestion (there are exceptions, like certain commercial use of the aircraft).

They likely missed a 0. Even still, the 2000-hour TBO on most engines is only a recommendation for non-commercial operators.

I might have missed a zero, been a while since I looked. Required to rent your plane out, which is why many will skip it when a teardown isn't needed for other reasons.

> That said, it seems pretty indefensible that it’s taken the FAA more than a decade to reach a decision on an unleaded avgas alternative.

But that's fast. Compare the FDA's decision on whether to continue mandating the exact ingredients in a "French dressing", which took 24 years despite being unopposed: https://reason.com/2022/01/12/the-fda-finally-liberates-fren...

As someone who lives in France that's an interesting article; I've never heard of or seen this condiment before. Wine and Cheese are highly regulated in France under the AOC system in order to preserve French culture. Is the same thing going on the US? The FDA is protecting the American culinary culture of 'french dressing'?

> Is the same thing going on the US? The FDA is protecting the American culinary culture of 'french dressing'?

That's not what's going on. French dressing is not a significant part of American culture; I'd be willing to believe a majority of Americans have no idea what it is. (I cannot recall ever seeing or hearing of it either, though it's probably visible as an option on restaurant menus.) Salad dressing in general is very common, but French dressing isn't.

The wording of the decision implies that the rule was justified on basically "truth in advertising" premises - the worry was that customers might rely on the label "French dressing" and be fooled into purchasing something they didn't want:

> After a comment and evaluation period, the FDA determined "that the standard of identity for French dressing no longer promotes honesty and fair dealing in the interest of consumers [...]"

There's no real way to know what the motivation actually was. A very neurotic regulator may have genuinely been worried about innovation in French dressing. Or something else might have been going on.

A somewhat similar issue that I also learned about from coverage in Reason is that the FDA imposes some "nutritional" requirements on products that are labeled "pasta", notably a minimum iron content. "Noodles", by contrast, are unregulated. (The words are synonymous.) In that case, the legislative history is apparently fairly clear that the motivation for regulation was protecting "pasta" manufacturers against economic competition from Asian imports. But the official justification is that these are nutritional standards on which customers rely. (Obviously false; the number of people in the US who are even aware that the definition of "pasta" is regulated is nearly zero.)

Here is your missing nuance; AOPA spent much of that decade and the one prior lobbying against unleaded avgas. AOPA will claim in principle to support unleaded AvGas, but in reality GA pilots and their lobbyists have been opposed; each proposal was always considered too cumbersome or expensive to pilots...

What is the biggest drawback of G100UL?

Usually when something is this hung up, its because the two sides disagree on the magnitude of a specific or small set of problems. I can't help but feel that this article is leaving out a key detail.

Cost, the article says approx 50-85c more per gallon.

Which is peanuts compared to the economic cost of distributing lead into everyone's lungs and waterways... But somehow it's the 85 cents a gallon everyone's worried about, not the tens of billions of dollars...

As the comments note, however, unleaded gas will not cause lead deposits in the engine and can therefore reduce maintenance required and extend maintenance intervals.

This is unlikely to be a major factor for aircraft engines, which need to be serviced regularly anyway (long before lead deposits would force it.)

In my experience, "lead deposits" are basically an issue caused by running excessively rich mixture, usually on the ground, and show up as spark plug fouling with engine roughness and reduced RPMs. The fix is just to vaporize the deposits by running the engine at leaner and at a high power setting.

I understand that you can also end up with exhaust valve deposits, but that's not something I've seen personally. Aviation engines (especially those used for training, which is a large proportion of the piston fleet) have incredibly short inspection intervals in any case.

What's the current price per gallon?

According to http://www.100ll.com/ - about $6.00 to $6.70 at retail.

Looking at my own local airports ( e.g. http://www.100ll.com/showfbo.php?HashID=d0f7e0afbdcf9b9a7cde... ) the price goes higher to often over $7.00/gal, though that's for "full service" (I don't know what that means, though).

Full-service just means it's dispensed by an employee rather than by the pilot. (The practical implication is "you can buy fuel only when the business selling fuel is open, or pay a call-out fee".) This could be dispensed from a fuel truck (most common for full-serve) or from a pump.

Self-service means there's a pump with a credit card and a really long hose, that would look familiar to what you see at an auto filling station.

You don't want to know. Somewhere between $5-10/gallon. Normal times, $3.50-7/gallon.

I'm a very strong believer in G100UL being the best future piston aviation fuel and have a lot of trust in the engineering and lab work that GAMI has done here.

The biggest drawback IMO is "there's no question that 100LL is a safe and reliable fuel operationally; it's been proven over a 50-year period; G100UL has significantly fewer operational hours in its history."

I could not care less about any sub-20% difference in retail price. Very few pilots paying out of their own pocket fly over 100 hours per year. $0.85/gallon increase in cost represents less than $1000/yr difference for reasonably high-utilization recreational/private pilots.

Even for higher utilization operators, fuel is around 25-40% of the total annual costs of a piston aircraft. A 20% increase in price of fuel represents a modest change in overall annual costs.

It sounds like what's needed is a way to get more operational hours in a way that satisfies the paper-pushers.

Allowing it on one engine of multi-prop planes might work if it weren't for the fact that those usually mix tanks ...

The drawback is liability - in order for this to work, the FAA has to blanket say "G100UL is allowed to replace 100LL". And if it doesn't go well, then it's on the FAA for having let it happen.

The price increase is also key and we're working on two assumptions - That GAMI isn't lying and the price increase will only by what they say, and that engine maintenance will in fact be less. Because it's already expensive for a person to train to become an airline pilot and this will make it worse as we head into an extreme pilot shortage in the near future.

There's also a fact that no one likes - the level of lead pollution coming from this is pretty minor. I know we all want to be "no lead ever!" but, as someone posted earlier, the amount of lead a person ends up exposed to when they are neighbors with an airport is nowhere near a level that's considered harmful to any extent. And if battery powered everything is going to start taking over general aviation, along with aviation diesel motors that can run jet fuel, then what's the rush to replace 100LL. It's on a limited timeline already.

Could be worse, though. They could be trying to force ethanol on us.

> And if battery powered everything is going to start taking over general aviation

I think we're a long way off even small electric planes starting to take over, at least a decade. And given the lifetime of planes, it'll be several more decades before they overtake combustion planes - and they may never do so for large aircraft because of battery energy density and weight.

There's nobody holding them accountable for not getting stuff done, so why would they get stuff done?

From the perspective of bureaucrats, nobody ever got demoted for following established protocol and when the established protocol is delay any deny...

It boggles the mind that people think that the FAA, CDC, EPA, and their other "favorite" agencies are somehow immune from the misaligned incentives, bureaucratic dysfunction and "not technically corruption" that characterize the agencies they don't like.

I have read the first few paragraphs and I still have no clue what this is about. It is full of buzzwords that I am not sure if they're names of a company, a product or a shortening of two or more regular English words into a new one.

What are GAMI, avgas, G100UL, etc? I assume it's all familiar terms for people in the US aviation industry but I would have welcomed a short introductory paragraph or two on what this whole article is actually about

GAMI = General Aviation Modifications, Inc., a company with experience in developing and selling modifications to general aviation aircraft. (They are best known for custom-tuned fuel injectors, but have several other products and the principals of GAMI also overlap with Tornado Alley Turbos [another modification company].)

Avgas - Aviation gasoline - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avgas

G100UL - The unleaded fuel proposed by GAMI as a drop-in replacement for 100LL avgas.

Gasoline. Airplanes use avgas. Most of them use 100LL which is the octane rating of 100 (same as cars you see 85, 90, 95, etc. on the pumps) followed by LL which stands for "Low Lead"

UL stands for unleaded.

Basically the guy invented unleaded gasoline that works with airplane engines and is the same octane rating.

GAMI is a firm that develops avgas[0]. Avgas is a shorthand for aviation gas, or fuel. G100UL is an unleaded avgas that acts as drop-in replacement for 100LL(100 Low Lead), used heavily in general aviation, think little Cessna. And yeah, the terms are all pretty standard for anyone who has flown before. Analogous to saying DFS instead of depth first search for anyone in computer science land. Hope it helps!

[0]https://gami.com/g100ul/news.php

Avgas is aviation gasoline. 100LL is 100 octane low-lead. 100UL is 100 octane unleaded. GAMI is the name of the company that designed the new fuel and injectors to inject that fuel. They put a "G" as in "GAMI" on the front of 100UL for branding.

For many reasons of which the FAA is part, certified piston aircraft nearly all run 100LL; they did not switch to unleaded as automotive did.

The GAO is probably one of the best parts of the government, yet it's effective is limited.

I'd like to say this type of stupidity in the government surprises me. But let's face it, even investigations into real scandals (that result in deaths no less) go nowhere (looking at you ATF Fast and Furious). Agencies constantly ignore and misapply laws/regulations as long as it benefits their goals or political agenda.

There's already an STC (Supplemental Type Certificate; permission from the authorities to modify or operate an aeroplane in a way that is different from when it was manufactured) which allows the use of regular gas (literally, from a gas station) in many different planes - https://www.autofuelstc.com/.

The thing that's most remarkable about this is that, to my knowledge, the FAA has approved multiple (at least five!) different jet fuel substitutes over the recent years, including those based on chemical transformation of sugars, other biomass, recycled cooking oil etc.

The only reason you can't run a plane jet engine on random crap you pulled from fat trap diluted with some solvent is that a lot of the parts are designed to be lubricated with kerosene, so essentially fuel is also piped for lubrication in many places.

The actual burning part tends to work so long as you can 1) push the fuel through the atomizer efficiently enough 2) it will burn "well enough" at the pressure provided (you don't want unburnt fuel fouling up turbine).

I believe some turbine engines have been demonstrated to operate with coal dust mixed with ethanol, and similarly with wood dust - engines that normally operate on diesel.

Devils Advocate: They need to evaluate very carefully the switch. If an engine was designed to run on 100LL then there's a switch to G100UL then care must be taken to ensure it won't mess up the engine. We're not talking about a land based engine (like a car) where if the engine stops you just coast over to the side of the road and call a tow truck. You're talking about an emergency landing which means possible damage to people and property other than the pilot and plane. Many of the general aviation planes out there were built in the 60's and 70's so the FAA needs to be sure it won't cause problems.

You clearly didn't read the article.

> To scrub the playhead forward, last summer at Oshkosh, to great fanfare, the STC approving G100UL was announced. It applied to a limited number of engines and GAMI was tasked with additional testing and data work to expand the engine list. This it did. The Wichita Aircraft Certification Office duly sent a letter to FAA HQ reporting that GAMI met all the test requirements—best-run program they had ever seen, or words to that effect—and was entitled to an STC-AML with every single spark ignition engine in the FAA database approved to use G100UL.

> The document rests on the desk of the executive director of the Aircraft Certification Service otherwise known as AIR-1. It’s awaiting the signature of AIR-1, who is Earl Lawrence. No date certain has been given, but in yet another last-minute delay, the FAA is now subjecting the STC to a Technical Advisory Board, a bureaucratic fence line that sprang out of the 737 MAX fiasco. The legislation that enabled TABs specifically applies to transport aircraft weighing 150,000 pounds or more, Braly says, and it hasn’t been explained how it can be applied to light aircraft.

>At a press conference, Lawrence said he thought PAFI had been “a great success.” I simply cannot agree. I don’t know how anyone in the industry could think this. PAFI was supposed to yield an unleaded drop-in replacement for 100LL. It did not. It was an abject failure and now, even though the FAA has an STC in hand awaiting approval for a fuel that has been proven, ad nauseum, to work in all engines, it wants more money for more testing. While the PAFI program—that was Piston Aviation Fuels Initiative—supposedly produced data, accessing it is all but impossible.

> Devils Advocate: They need to evaluate very carefully the switch

So instead of 10 or 20 years of testing and 'carefully evaluating, how many would you think sufficient? Is it 50 years? Or is 100 years about right?

A Modest Proposal (aka nice-sounding fantasy): Congress identifies a country with a competent, responsible aviation regulation agency which has either "gotten the lead out", or is energetically moving down that road. It starts drafting laws to replace the FAA with a new "Contracted Regulatory Services" division of that other country's agency...with an explicit "the FAA will be eliminated" endgame. Whether that threat stimulates timely and competent action at the FAA, or not...

Mancur Olson[1] strikes again.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_sclerosis

Re other comments. I'm just going to put this [1] here for easy access. Write to your congress person! It's by far the most effective way to support these kinds of cases and motivate change.

[1] https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representati...

The FAA is among many federal agencies that are the result of delegated authority from Congress. They have been (so far) unsuccessfully argued to be unconstitutional, the argument is that the constitution doesn't give Congress the power to delegate their authority. These agencies are quasi-legislative, they make their own regulations both applied internally but on the public; for the FAA these are the Federal Aviation Regulations or FARs. They are quasi-judicial, they have their own enforcement. Pilots, manufacturers, flight schools - anyone and anything regulated by the FAA caught violating FARs are subject to enforcement action by the FAA, they don't go before a judge or a jury. And they are also quasi-executive, because they enforce their own regulations.

If you've heard of separation of powers, three branches of government, this regulatory arrangement is the exact opposite. While you get all kinds of specialization within these different departments, they're also sufficiently divorced from accountability that they aren't really accountable, except by budgeting. Congress can and frequently does just decide to defund specific projects within departments.

Quite a lot of this bureaucracy is by design though, Congress is highly incentivized to spend more time campaigning/taking legalized bribes, and less time making laws and keeping track of where all the money is spent, and if it's spent effectively and per the law - hence another department that specializes in that so Congress doesn't do it unless there's a TV reason (raise money) to do it. That'd be the GAO.

So it all comes back to money and not civic duty.

But this kind of government is exactly what we get in a culture that values entertainment over facts, spectator sports over citizenry, the incivility of outrage politics over civility, illiberalism over liberalism. And the impatience of people over due process does incentivize the desire for personalities who can break through the log jam, maybe even violate the law, and force bureaucrats to do their job - autocracy all very appealing to the weak minded, and there's a lot of that.

If the society were more on the same page than not, we'd stand a better chance of amending the constitution and get money out of politics. But we're not, so oh well.

Sir this is a Wendy's

For context, the FAA is the Federal Aviation Administration. Avgas is aviation fuel. Wichita is a town in Kansas. BP is British Petroleum.

The rest of this rant/post is a mystery soup of acronyms and references to events we're supposed to have already known about before reading it.

A site billing itself "World's Premier Independent Aviation News..." might assume that their target audience is more familiar with those things than the average HN reader is?

Related: Is the FAA able to stop the terrible practice of airlines having to fly EMPTY flights in and out of airports to maintain their berthing rights?

So frustrating to emit so much pollution needlessly.

I’m not surprised at the extreme red tape here. I’m more shocked to learn leaded gas is still a thing. And kinda furious about it.

Reading this in Paul’s voice makes this all the better. Check out their YouTube channel for more of his wit and sarcasm.

Between this and the Boeing self-certification fiasco it sure seems like the FAA has lost its way rather thoroughly

There's really no surprise that the FAA hasn't fixed this.

You see, as the article explains, the FAA regulates airlines and airlines use leaded gas. Inhalation of lead causes decreased IQ and diminished intellectual capacity. Since FAA regulators have to spend substantial time around airplanes and leaded gas, they have become a bunch of bumbling idiots. It's a Greek tragedy really.

Barely any airline uses leaded gas anymore, exception being small and/or specialised outfits like those that fly WW2-vintage DC-3s in Alaska and so on.

Airlines have long enough flights and can pack them enough that the overhaul economies of turbine engines work in their favour (they work very not in favour of private aviation).

What overhaul differences? Piston engines are overhauled per amount of hours worked, period. Turbine engines have overhaul times specified both in hours worked, and cycles, and you have to overhaul when you reach either of those limits, whichever comes first. A cycle is engine-start to engine-stop. In private aviation you're going to shut down the engine often, so you can quickly rack up cycles that end with you having to send your engine for expensive overhaul.

Which brings us to the unasked question, "what's in it for them?".

I don’t see why they only poll pilots about this. All people are affected by lead.

FAA's job is to freeze progress for as long as possible.

Are they not also lobbied by various players to badger Space-x?

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