Judge’s Optimism Clouds Fuel Ruling

A few weeks ago a rather desperate sounding plea landed in my inbox from someone who wanted to change the general aviation industry as we know it. He wanted instructions on how to go about doing so and the sooner the better. Some things just won’t wait, you know.

The temptation, of course, was to toss it into the virtual File 13 but I figured anyone who’s worked up the gumption to put this sort of thing to prose can take a few minutes from me so that I could at least politely tell him I couldn’t help him.

“Hi. I need guidance how i can get recommendation to join and connect with organization who believes diesel engine for general aviation. I am designer and engineer who make 2 stroke diesel engine for drone and urban air mobility. And I want move to America and make my engine cheap enough for less than 15000 USD for Certified and experimental plane . But I Don’t have any connection in USA. Please guide me how I can get in touch with organization or companies in USA. Thanks.”

There’s was something about the naked innocence of the request that intrigued me, so I responded. Turns out the fellow, who I’m not naming right now because I haven’t asked him if I can, has already built some engines, including one that powered an entry in the Dakar Truck Race and he said it went the distance and ran perfectly. He has a machine shop and what sounds like a track record and he’s pretty sure he can make a four-cylinder horizontally opposed diesel engine that makes 400 horsepower for a quarter of the price of anything comparable on the market today.

I’ve been in touch with him since and you may be hearing more about him. He seems aware of just how hard it will be to get anywhere with this idea but stranger things have happened. Actually, I’m not sure that’s really true because this is a pretty strange thing but I’ll keep you posted.

Just to make sure we both aren’t crazy, I checked with a couple of folks who should know better and they agreed that chances are this will go nowhere but stranger things have happened. “There’s always a small chance (when you dismiss guys like these) that you are telling the Wright Brothers they are idiots, and to go away,” was one of the opinions offered. Maybe I still have some innocence and naivety left in me but I’m going to see what I can do to at least get this fellow pointed in the right direction, assuming I can figure out what that is.

This inquiry came a few months after another Hail Mary call from an American who said he has literally run out of options to get the FAA to assess, and ultimately approve, an engine adaptation that he’s flown for thousands of hours and that has some staggeringly good numbers. There was a square peg somewhere in the process where only a round hole was available. Years of work and hundreds of thousands of dollars are at stake. He’s been dealing personally with the regulators but is no babe in the woods like the other fellow. I suggested something he hadn’t thought of when dealing with stone-faced bureaucrats and it seems to be working the last I heard. I’m hoping to have an update on that one soon and maybe a pilot report on it.

Believe it or not this blog is about unleaded fuel and I cite these examples as a way to back into a treatise on just how hard it is to get anything done in this industry. The topic of new engines is relevant because either of these new designs would be capable of eliminating the need for high octane unleaded fuel if they work as the developers say they do. But mammoth obstacles in the way to develop and certify anything are so expensively huge that there’s little chance that will happen.

On the fuel front, as we’re reporting, a California judge has quashed an attempt by an environmental group to compel a couple of dozen FBOs and four fuel distributors to carry GAMI’s G100UL as part of a deal they signed to settle a lawsuit over the impacts of leaded avgas. I was impressed by the judge’s understanding of the issues but he seems to have a lot of faith in the FAA’s and industry’s ability to come up with a foolproof substitute for 100LL in the next five years. They’ve been at it for almost 40 years and nothing has worked well enough so far.

G100UL is being sold in California, Texas and Mississippi and by all accounts it works just fine in engines, including the high performance six-cylinder mills that use 70 percent of the avgas sold. There have been some complaints that it damages paints, fuel tank seals and rubber parts in fuel systems. The FAA is investigating those claims but, as far as I know, has not reached any conclusions on them. G100UL remains approved for use in about 98 percent of U.S. certified aircraft. That doesn’t mean the paint and seal issues don’t need attention but the FAA doesn’t seem that worried about them.

The other two candidate fuels are nowhere near as far along as G100UL. Swift Fuels 100R has been approved by STC for use in two models of Cessna 172, both of which are already approved to use 94 unleaded avgas. This year it will be tested on a Continental 550 that is also approved to use 94UL. Lyondell/Basell’s 100E is going through the FAA/PAFI process and after a year of testing is less than a third of the way through. So the judge’s confidence in the steady progression to a solution that everyone can agree on in the next five years seems a little optimistic.

Part of the process the judge seems keen on is obtaining an ASTM specification. As we all know, GAMI refuses to pursue that route because he doesn’t trust the integrity of the process. Both Swift and Lyondell/Basell say an ASTM spec is essential and they’re pursing it but as far as I know neither has attained it.

One of the reasons for my skepticism is the conduct of the court proceeding itself. The action was launched by the Center for Environmental Health, one of dozens of such organizations in the state that have been empowered by legislation to sleuth out and get legal visibility for threats to water, air and land. Leaded avgas is low hanging fruit in that context.

The CEH action was a continuation of a 10-year-old case they effectively won against a relatively small portion of the aviation fuel industry in the state. But the opposition to it was a massive onslaught of affidavits from a broad spectrum of OEMs, engine makers, several alphabet groups and the owners of planes who believed they were damaged by G100UL saying it was too risky to compel the sale of G100UL. The anti-G100UL side used one of the country’s most expensive law firms to make its case and it had to have cost millions. It worked. The judge agreed and implied he had faith the powers-that-be would sort it all out by 2030.

The only legal maker of tetraethyl lead, a British company called Innospec, is also banking on that. It wants desperately to get out of the lead additive business and since the FAA and EPA have both said 2030 will see the last of leaded gasoline, that’s become Innospec’s deadline, too. So it would appear that regardless of whether a substitute gets the consensus the judge seems confident will be achieved in four years and seven months, 100LL will go away.

That brings us back to our engine developers. One way to get rid of the myriad issues posed by the leaded gasoline debate is to build engines that don’t need leaded gasoline. Both of the folks I cited say they can do that. In fact, they both say they already have. They just need the paperwork to catch up. Simple, right?

By comparison, I think Orville and Wilbur had it relatively easy. They worked in obscurity, marking failure and success in inches and feet with no oversight and no legal challenges (those would come later). Their problems were purely physical and technological and as reasonable men they tackled them in a logical and practical way. They had many, many failures and more than a few crashes. It wasn’t until they had the solutions that they demonstrated their creation to the world. It was far from Utopian but it got done in a remarkably short time considering the lasting impact it had.

It was one of the stranger things that has happened to shape human destiny and it certainly wasn’t the last. Maybe we’re due.