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Blows my mind we are going to have commercial electric planes BEFORE they bother to get poisonous lead out of avgas for decades after knowing it was deadly
by ck2 4y ago
Blows my mind we are going to have commercial electric planes BEFORE they bother to get poisonous lead out of avgas for decades after knowing it was deadly
- hef19898 4y agoAs crazy as it sounds, getting a conventional (as opposed to eVTOL) aircraft in the air is easier than replacing the fuel thousands of legacy aircraft engines.
- DarmokJalad1701 4y agoFAA has approved G100UL though. Now it is just a matter of scaling up + distribution.
- RC_ITR 4y agoSure, but that’s a lobbying thing. AVgas isn’t what runs jet engines (as I’m sure you know), it’s what runs hobbyist planes. And given how many other externalities there are to hobbyist flying (noise, airports on prime land, etc.) US hobby pilots find their way onto various political committees almost as matter of survival. It also doesn’t hurt that the average hobbyist pilot is a wealthy white man above 40.
- akiselev 4y agoLobbying by pilots might redirect some money to upgrade someone's favorite small airport but their influence pales in comparison to long standing national security doctrine. Pilots and airports are part of our emergency infrastructure, the kind you don't think you need until the worst happens like a natural disaster. The FAA, FEMA, and the DoD take that kind of preparedness very seriously so they pretty much refuse to come down on private aviation as long as there's not enough PPLs for their liking.