3 ms·

Airlines (outside of bush planes) are not using AvGas in any substantive quantity, and have not been since the early 60's. The amount of AvGas used a year is dw

by Aloha 5y ago

Airlines (outside of bush planes) are not using AvGas in any substantive quantity, and have not been since the early 60's. The amount of AvGas used a year is dwarfed (several times over) by the amount of Jet Fuel (Jet A does not have TEL in it). AvGas (which uses TEL) is used by general aviation exclusively.

LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
That doesn't make jet fuel any better. Just search for 'Toxicologic assessment' or 'profile of jet fuel' and focus on the 'A1', which is the one used for commercial aviation. Then there is the elephant in the room nobody wants to talk about, the military which is using the 'JP-X' variants all over the world, some of them even for their cars and trucks, because, hey, it's just better Diesel, why would we stock different fuels if we don't have to? What a logistic nightmare!1!!
- eutectic 5y ago
  Organic compounds burn up, lead just accumulates.
  - LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
    You're free to inhale as much as you want to. It's just something I won't do.
xyzzyz 5y ago
For people not familiar with terminology, “general aviation” does not mean “regular airplanes”, but, to a first approximation, “small piston-engined airplanes”, operated by hobbyists or small charter operations.
- tialaramex 5y ago
  I don't think most "small charter operations" would be General Aviation (unless I understand what's being chartered here?) and although most GA planes are pistons that's not part of the definition. What matters is why you're flying, not what you fly. The categories (for non-military use) are generally Scheduled or Air Transport (any time you buy tickets for a flight, that's the category, you don't know or care who is flying, you paid for the journey between a specific origin and destination at a specific time; a FedEx plane is also Transport), then Commercial (not Transport but somebody is getting paid to fly aircraft, maybe it's crop spraying, TV news copter, police, or just another TV priest being flown around in his private jet), and only if nobody was getting paid is it General Aviation. If your cosmetic dentist can afford a brand new Vision Jet so that he can live 100 miles away and fly in to do $5000 appointments without sitting in traffic, that's General Aviation. The authorities don't care that he's getting paid to be a dentist, he's not getting paid to fly his plane. If your airline uses a relatively tiny PA-42 to get customers to an obscure but important airstrip with maybe 3-4 passengers per day that's still Air Transport. On the other hand if some oil sheik owns their own A320 with their own custom decor and has a team of pilots to fly it wherever they want, that's still only Commercial, not Air Transport because nobody is buying tickets, it just goes wherever he wants.
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    GA is non-commercial, non-military, non-aerial-work (application, survey, etc). The pilots can be paid employees and have it still be GA. (Your sheik A320 example would be considered GA, not commercial, as would business operators, fractional operators, and of course private operations.) Don’t confuse the commercial certificate[“license”](which is required to be paid for flying) with commercial operations (typically holding out to the public for air transport).
tialaramex 5y ago
I would guess one thing that confuses non-pilots is that while say an A320 or a 747 looks like it has jet engines, lots of small regional aircraft (e.g. a Dash-8) visibly have propellers, and so it's natural for lay people to assume that's basically the same idea as on a Cessna 172 or a Spitfire scaled up. But it isn't. Those planes aren't aren't fuelled by AvGas. Their engines use JetA (basically kerosene) because they've got a turbine inside like those turbofan engines which look so visibly different, however their turbine powers the propeller rather than a set of fans to drive more air through the engine and produce thrust that way. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turboprop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turboprop
daddylongstroke 5y ago
>AvGas (which uses TEL) is used by general aviation exclusively. And by people who don't want to ever have to clean or rebuild a carburetor in their small motors. It's been an exceptional motor-life-extender to my chainsaws specifically.

by Aloha 5y ago

LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago

That doesn't make jet fuel any better. Just search for 'Toxicologic assessment' or 'profile of jet fuel' and focus on the 'A1', which is the one used for commercial aviation. Then there is the elephant in the room nobody wants to talk about, the military which is using the 'JP-X' variants all over the world, some of them even for their cars and trucks, because, hey, it's just better Diesel, why would we stock different fuels if we don't have to? What a logistic nightmare!1!!

eutectic 5y ago
Organic compounds burn up, lead just accumulates.
- LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
  You're free to inhale as much as you want to. It's just something I won't do.

xyzzyz 5y ago

For people not familiar with terminology, “general aviation” does not mean “regular airplanes”, but, to a first approximation, “small piston-engined airplanes”, operated by hobbyists or small charter operations.

tialaramex 5y ago
I don't think most "small charter operations" would be General Aviation (unless I understand what's being chartered here?) and although most GA planes are pistons that's not part of the definition. What matters is why you're flying, not what you fly. The categories (for non-military use) are generally Scheduled or Air Transport (any time you buy tickets for a flight, that's the category, you don't know or care who is flying, you paid for the journey between a specific origin and destination at a specific time; a FedEx plane is also Transport), then Commercial (not Transport but somebody is getting paid to fly aircraft, maybe it's crop spraying, TV news copter, police, or just another TV priest being flown around in his private jet), and only if nobody was getting paid is it General Aviation. If your cosmetic dentist can afford a brand new Vision Jet so that he can live 100 miles away and fly in to do $5000 appointments without sitting in traffic, that's General Aviation. The authorities don't care that he's getting paid to be a dentist, he's not getting paid to fly his plane. If your airline uses a relatively tiny PA-42 to get customers to an obscure but important airstrip with maybe 3-4 passengers per day that's still Air Transport. On the other hand if some oil sheik owns their own A320 with their own custom decor and has a team of pilots to fly it wherever they want, that's still only Commercial, not Air Transport because nobody is buying tickets, it just goes wherever he wants.
- sokoloff 5y ago
  GA is non-commercial, non-military, non-aerial-work (application, survey, etc). The pilots can be paid employees and have it still be GA. (Your sheik A320 example would be considered GA, not commercial, as would business operators, fractional operators, and of course private operations.) Don’t confuse the commercial certificate[“license”](which is required to be paid for flying) with commercial operations (typically holding out to the public for air transport).

tialaramex 5y ago

I would guess one thing that confuses non-pilots is that while say an A320 or a 747 looks like it has jet engines, lots of small regional aircraft (e.g. a Dash-8) visibly have propellers, and so it's natural for lay people to assume that's basically the same idea as on a Cessna 172 or a Spitfire scaled up. But it isn't. Those planes aren't aren't fuelled by AvGas. Their engines use JetA (basically kerosene) because they've got a turbine inside like those turbofan engines which look so visibly different, however their turbine powers the propeller rather than a set of fans to drive more air through the engine and produce thrust that way. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turboprop https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turboprop

daddylongstroke 5y ago

>AvGas (which uses TEL) is used by general aviation exclusively. And by people who don't want to ever have to clean or rebuild a carburetor in their small motors. It's been an exceptional motor-life-extender to my chainsaws specifically.