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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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
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 = 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].)
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!
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.
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...
[+] [-] dpifke|4 years ago|reply
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)
[+] [-] chrisbrandow|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] giantg2|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] phkahler|4 years ago|reply
On paper I was a fan of isobutanol but that didn't pan out either.
[+] [-] jacknews|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] jonititan|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] protonbob|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cjrp|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] edrxty|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 535188B17C93743|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sokoloff|4 years ago|reply
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...
[+] [-] bumby|4 years ago|reply
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."
[+] [-] burlesona|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] EricE|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] FL410|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] SomeHacker44|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] inglor_cz|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] paganel|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] mountainofdeath|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] systemvoltage|4 years ago|reply
When people's job is do X, they will continue to do X even if X is not needed.
[+] [-] Enginerrrd|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] jaywalk|4 years ago|reply
> 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.
[+] [-] JumpCrisscross|4 years ago|reply
It also makes it useless for someone curious about bringing this to a legislator's or senior administration official's attention.
[+] [-] Stevvo|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kayfox|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] teekert|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Cthulhu_|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ajsnigrutin|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] daniel-cussen|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Terry_Roll|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] sklargh|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bombcar|4 years ago|reply
There is NO risk to the bureaucrats if they keep stalling on unleaded and let everyone run 100LL for all eternity.
[+] [-] bluGill|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Stevvo|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thaumasiotes|4 years ago|reply
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...
[+] [-] rbinv|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Workaccount2|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] throwaway0a5e|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] dark-star|4 years ago|reply
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
[+] [-] JaceLightning|4 years ago|reply
UL stands for unleaded.
Basically the guy invented unleaded gasoline that works with airplane engines and is the same octane rating.
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] sokoloff|4 years ago|reply
Avgas - Aviation gasoline - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avgas
G100UL - The unleaded fuel proposed by GAMI as a drop-in replacement for 100LL avgas.
[+] [-] bluejellybean|4 years ago|reply
[0]https://gami.com/g100ul/news.php
[+] [-] giantg2|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] cjrp|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NovemberWhiskey|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] p_l|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] flareback|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bell-cot|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Symmetry|4 years ago|reply
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institutional_sclerosis