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