unless you live next to an airport or even remotely close to it
then lead is being sprayed all over you, your car and home, daily
for THREE DECADES NOW
no rush, not like it's poison or does permanent damage to your health/IQ
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/leaded-gas-wa...
Acknowledging that there is no safe amount of lead exposure, the amount of lead that "is being sprayed all over you" from a tiny handful of piston airplanes is minuscule compared to what we were all exposed to prior to the mid 70s. Like many orders of magnitude. I'd be concerned if I worked at the airport pumping gas or something.
There is unleaded airplane fuel, although leaded fuel is still used. What I have been told is that it would take some time for the unleaded airplane fuel (which is compatible with the existing airplanes that use leaded fuel) to be distributed to enough places to be commonly available enough, which it isn't yet.
Yeah it's absurd how aviation is somehow exempt from these rules, especially since piston engine aircraft carry virtually no vital role in anything except people flying them for fun. There have been viable alternatives for a long long time now.
I guess people who have money for personal airplanes also have the money to lobby when it matters for their interests. Pricks, I hope they die of dementia.
Wow, very angry and uninformed comment. No airplane owners are lobbying for lead. As a pilot with a personal airplane that runs on avgas, we all want lead to go away too. But it's a problem with FAA regulations, and an infrastructure problem where every airport nationwide needs to have separate fuel tanks/trucks with leaded fuel and the newer lead-free alternatives simultaneously, which is a massive expense. Plus, there is no consensus on which lead-free alternative is safest for old engines, so we're still waiting on data.
California has a few airports that are stocking the lead-free alternatives, but that's about it.
But yes, blame the small aircraft owners if it makes you feel better.
> "piston engine aircraft carry virtually no vital role in anything except people flying them for fun"
I guess we just shouldn't train new pilots then.
Yeah well, I'm sure you know what's also a massive expense in aviation? Everything. If a regulation was made that required it, people would do it regardless of how much it costs and it would finally become a reliable option if it was widely available. No regular car gas station would stock lead free if it wasn't mandated.
And well it's fine by me if you want to literally breathe lead every time you fly, you do you, but who the fuck gives you the right to poison everyone else around you? Like if anyone did what you do they'd justifiably spend their life in prison.
I find it horrid that there is even a debate around lead free alternatives. Oh woe is me, my 80s engine will last 100 hours less! Jesus fucking christ. You sound like a 3M lawyer advocating for PFAS. "The alternatives are inconvenient and expensive so we're gonna keep poisoning everyone until they aren't because we can."
> I guess we just shouldn't train new pilots then.
There are literally countless options man. There's even electrics now, you don't exactly need long range for training and small turboprop jet-a options for long hauls. I know the lead is making it hard to think, but for the sake of people breathing your exhaust please do try.
Piston aircraft are vital to training new pilots. Without the piston fleet, you wouldn't have anybody flying anything larger.
Not to mention they're frequently used for air ambulance flights, survey work, and law enforcement. The "satellite" view on most online mapping tools is recorded from a piston aircraft.
Also, the current proposed plan is to migrate off of leaded gasoline for most of the country by 2030, which is actually quite ambitious given that acceptable alternative fuels didn't exist until literally a few years ago.
They can run in regular gas reliably enough for training, they can run on jet-a, they can run on batteries. Anything vital can run on jet-a without any barriers.
Excuses are made because it requires retiring or refitting old aircraft, and people need to be forced to do it. Simple as. I will die on this hill.
> The "satellite" view on most online mapping tools is recorded from a piston aircraft.
It is not. You're thinking of lidar.
No, piston aircraft cannot run on Jet-A. That would cause detonation and the engine would quite literally self-destruct within minutes - likely during takeoff when the engine is at highest power.
There's been some trials of battery-powered trainer aircraft. The last I checked, they still don't have enough range to do the "long" cross country that's legally required.
And I assure you it's not because of old aircraft. Some flights schools have fleets of brand new 2025/26 models - all of them still run on leaded avgas.
Wait, you think workhorse aircraft today can run on batteries?
I know a Velis Electro can fly for an hour, that's plenty of time for flight school. I'm sure there's better options now too. If something needs to take longer than that and is worth doing, then do it with a turboprop.
That's besides the fact that there are genuine certified unleaded alternative fuels for piston aircraft now. Fucking "we oh can't do it" lead apologists smh.
"One hour is plenty of time for flight school" is not doing you any favours in coming across as knowing what you're talking about lol. Good freaking luck completing cross-country flights for an instrument rating with that endurance, never mind your certainty that there are "better options" as if the laws of physics have changed dramatically between 2020 and today.
And I mentioned workhorse aircraft for a reason, considering that the Velis Electro has a payload of...172 kilograms. Turboprops (gas turbines in general) are far more expensive and far less fuel efficient at low altitudes than their piston engine counterparts, which is precisely why piston engines still exist.
The fact that alternative fuels now exist for piston engines does not make the blatantly wrong nonsense you've been throwing out any more correct, such as your suggestion that you can "just run" piston engines on Jet-A. That is something that anyone who actually knows anything about internal combustion engines can tell you for free causes regular piston engines to detonate/knock. Your assertion that piston-engine aircraft have virtually no vital role was similarly ignorant.
And that's besides the fact that black-and-white "if you don't agree with whatever half-assed or plainly incorrect crap I say in support of The Cause™ you're an apologist" nonsense lost its efficacy years ago; you might want to find a better soapboxing tactic for 2026.
It really doesn't matter if I don't know the paragraph eight of rule one hundred and thirty four, I know that if you can't do something without poisoning people you should not get to do it. That's as much as there is to it, and it's an argument you can't ever win without proving lead is harmless or something.
You can't just run piston engines on jet-a but you can run them on regular high octane from any regular gas station or any of the actual alternatives, my point was you can swap them for small turboprop powerplants and run the plane on jet-a. Afaik reducing knocking is not really the point of avgas either, which I'm sure you know, but vapor lock at high altitudes, which you can easily avoid by... not flying high, which by your own point is the main use case for piston aircraft. I guess we'll just spray lead over everyone instead, cause it's "safer".
One hour really isn't enough time. You can spend 30-40 minutes just getting in/out of busy terminal airspace, which would only leave 20-30 minutes for instruction - which is nothing. Most flight lessons are closer to 1.5 hours for a reason.
You're also legally required to maintain 30-45 minutes of emergency reserve, longer if you're flying IFR.
And again, this isn't even touching on the "long" cross-country flights that are legally required for training.
Piston-engine aircraft both have much more vital roles than people flying them for fun (for example they form practically all of "last mile" air service as well as pretty much all of ag flying) and very much do not have viable alternatives as far as both cost and operational efficiency go.