Avgas Future


Business & Commercial Aviation Jul 01 , 2011 , p. 10
Kent Misegades
Aviation Sales, U-Fuel



While members of the GA Avgas Coalition continue gnashing their teeth over increased calls by various environmental groups to curtail the use of leaded avgas (BCA, June 2011, page 22), pilots and airports across the country are taking things into their own hands by adding lead-free, ethanol-free premium autogas, an FAA-approved aviation fuel since 1982.


While members of the GA Avgas Coalition continue gnashing their teeth over increased calls by various environmental groups to curtail the use of leaded avgas (BCA, June 2011, page 22), pilots and airports across the country are taking things into their own hands by adding lead-free, ethanol-free premium autogas, an FAA-approved aviation fuel since 1982.

The company I represent, fuel equipment maker U-Fuel (www.ufuel.com), founded the non-profit Aviation Fuel Club (www.aviationfuelclub.org) in January to assist airports in finding suppliers of autogas and low-cost fuel storage options. It is an accepted fact that 70-80% of all piston-engine airplanes in the U.S. run legally and well on autogas, the fuel most piston-engine makers now target for their future generation of products. At AERO Friedrichshafen 2011, the world's largest producer of piston-engine airplanes, Italy's Tecnam, announced that its entire fleet of aircraft, consisting of several two-seat LSAs, its sleek new four-seat P2010, the P2006T twin and even its new 11-seat P2012 twin all use engines from Rotax and Lycoming that operate on lead-free, ethanol-free autogas. For both economic and environmental reasons, we believe that the only fuels we'll see on airports in the future will be premium autogas and Jet-A. It is already this case in most developing countries, where avgas has all but disappeared.

Perry Mick