Left Seat

CVS 30 from Tasuma

Acting under orders from Congress the FAA is speeding up its process to allow unmanned aircraft to fly in the national air space system. So, at least some of us will be sharing the air with unpiloted aircraft sooner than later.

First question—what to call these things? The term RP V for remotely pilot vehicle hung around for years. More recently the term UAV for unmanned aerial vehicle became common. More recently still the FAA favors the term UAS for unmanned aircraft systems. Let’s skip the acronyms and call them drones.

Drones have captured the public imagination over the past several years because the military has been using them to fire missiles at suspected terrorists with an apparently high degree of precision. Of course, the military doesn’t brag about the misses, but there have been enough direct hits to talk about that drones—particularly the large Predator— seem like magic to the public watching the nightly news on TV.

Dozens and dozens of companies are now in the drone manufacturing business creating all kinds of aerial vehicles from softball sized helicopters to enormous jet aircraft that can fly above 50,000 feet.

Mix public fascination with drones and lobbyists from drone makers together and Congress can’t possibly resist. So language in the FAA funding bill requires the FAA to devise ways to quickly integrate drones into the airspace.

Since drones don’t fit into the airspace in any conventional way the FAA is issuing waivers for their operation. The waiver process is certainly not new and is used for all kinds of flying activity such as air shows that don’t fit neatly into the normal rules. The initial drone operating waivers will go to police and public safety organizations and then the FAA will begin allowing drones to fly for commercial purposes such as pipeline patrol, mapping, photography and all sorts of observation.

At first glance, this sounds ominous to me as a pilot. Yes, I have a traffic alerting system that I trust to “see” the transponder on a drone. And before drones are turned loose in general airspace they too will have traffic detection and avoidance systems. But still, the drone pilot will be on the ground, or maybe there will not even be a pilot but a preprogrammed computer onboard to direct the flight path.

However, those concerns are still quite far into the future. The waivers the FAA is proposing to issue in the shorter term will restrict drone flights to altitudes below 400 feet agl, away from airports, and the drone must remain within sight of the operator on the ground. Initially the drone weight will be limited to 4.4 pounds, about two kilos. Once a drone operator demonstrates safety and competency in actual use, the size of the drone may be allowed to increase to 25 pounds.

The waivers the FAA is talking about issuing now, in the short term, are really not much different from radio controlled model airplanes. Some RC models are certainly heavier than 4.4 pounds, and some are very fast, even jet powered. But the model must remain within sight of its pilot on the ground, and must remain at low altitudes and away from airports and any other area where conventional airplanes are likely to fly.

Are the new FAA policies to streamline issuance of waivers for drone flight a worry? Not for me. At least not yet. There is nothing in the recent announcement that makes a drone any more threatening than an RC model airplane. But when Congress starts to pressure the FAA to change long standing air space operating policies, now that’s a reason to at least pay attention, and maybe even worry.

No tarmac here at Oshkosh

I really hate the way the word “tarmac” is being used to describe pavement on an airport. It’s one thing when NBC’s Brian Williams, for example, uses tarmac to describe the ramp. After all, Brian is not a pilot, as far as I know, but most importantly he is speaking to an audience of non-pilots. But when I hear a real pilot say or write “tarmac” in reference to any part of an airport I cringe.

Tarmac is a Britishism for pavement. Tarmac is short for tarmacadam. A patent was actually awarded to Edgar Purnell Hooley in 1901 to protect the process of mixing tar with macadam and rolling it smooth to pave a road.

Not much, if any, real tarmac still exists, and certainly there is none of it on any U.S. airport I have ever heard of. The actual tarmac was superseded by asphalt which is commonly used for airport pavement, but concrete is even more common, particularly at larger airports where heavy airplanes operate.

I first started hearing the word tarmac used in reference to airports when the extreme airline delays began trapping passengers on the airplane while it was parked waiting for gate space, or customs or whatever. For some reason the general media began referring to these airplanes as “stuck on the tarmac.”

And tarmac appears to be restricted to airports. I don’t hear TV news people refer to cars being stuck on the tarmac in a long traffic jam. And I have never read in any newspaper report that there will be delays because a road is being re-tarmaced. Somehow airports got stuck with what little tarmac may actually still exist.

But what really drives me crazy is that every piece of pavement on an airport has a name, and it isn’t concrete, asphalt and certainly not tarmac.

There is a truism among sailors that a rope ceases to be a rope once it comes onboard. The reason ropes don’t exist on a sailboat is because every line on a boat has a name, and it’s not rope. The line may be a halyard, or sheet, or guy, or vang, or outhaul, or rode or any dozens of other working lines on a boat. These lines began as rope, but once they went to work they received a name that identifies their function.

It’s the same on an airport. Once pavement—any kind of pavement—is laid on an airport it gets a name. The pavement is a runway, or a taxiway, or a ramp, or a tiedown area, or a runup area, or an overrun, or even a penalty box. You’ll never hear ground control tell you to take the blacktop to the concrete. Every surface has a name.

I fear I’m losing my crusade against tarmac on airports because I have seen aviation writers actually use the word. If I ever see tarmac on one of those standardized FAA signs that identify pavement on an airport I’ll know all is lost and it’s time to hang it up.

 A never ending debate among pilots is the role of automation, particularly in IFR flying. On one side is a group who thinks you should hand fly in the clouds a lot and fly complicated procedures when possible because some day equipment failure may force you to do just that. The other side of the argument is that we should use all of the equipment and tools available to make IFR flying as simple, and thus potentially as safe, as possible.

This came up the other day here at Oshkosh. Another pilot and I had both flown in under IFR conditions with a southerly wind. The visibility was not that bad, but the ceiling was low enough that you had to pay attention on whatever IFR approach you flew.

When you leaf through the approach charts—twist a knob or touch some buttons on an electronic display for most of us these days—you come across the localizer/DME backcourse approach to runway 18 as the first option for landing with a south wind. At least it is the first option on the controller’s list of available procedures and that’s what they advertise on ATIS and what approach control tells you to expect.

 Nothing wrong with a backcourse approach, but you do need to set up your avionics correctly so that the left-right course deviation indication makes sense. And because it is a non-precision approach you need to step down in altitude as you proceed along the backcourse to the runway.

But Oshkosh Runway 18 is also served by a RNAV GPS approach that provides lateral guidance, and also vertical guidance that sends you down a glidepath to the runway. The approach is an LNAV/V meaning it has lateral nav guidance with vertical information. It is not the “precision” LPV type of GPS approach, but it’s darn good. Minimums on the approach are one mile visibility with a minimum descent to 400 feet above the runway.

When approach control told me to expect the backcourse approach I immediately asked for the RNAV GPS instead. No problem for the controller and I received an instant clearance to an initial fix on the approach. The lateral and vertical guidance was perfect, just like an ILS. Actually better than most ILS approaches because the guidance was rock steady with none of the scallops and wiggles many ILS signals have.

My friend told me he was fired up to fly the backcourse because he almost never gets to fly them for real. But, as he neared the airport, the wind went left to blow right down Runway 27 so he flew the RNAV GPS to that runway.

Which of us showed the “right” attitude that day. My friend who wanted to practice what is becoming an unusual approach that GPS will make obsolete before long? Or me, who had no interest in the past and wanted to fly the simplest and easiest procedure the airport had to offer?

There is, of course, no right or wrong answer. Both procedures are perfectly safe. Flying the backcourse requires more steps because you need to monitor your DME from the airport, look at the chart, and then step down in altitude based on the DME. That’s not hard to do, and is something any instrument rated pilot must be able to do. But still, it’s at least a little more demanding than flying a stable descent that keeps the glideslope needle centered on the RNAV GPS approach.

Am I a lazy pilot? Those who know me well are disqualified from answering that. But I also believe that the easiest, simplest procedure to get from inside the clouds to the runway also offers the fewest chance to screw up.

A similar thought had crossed my mind earlier in the flight as I sat on top of the clouds and checked the weather conditions below for the 100 or so miles the Avidyne system showed in all directions. It was IFR everywhere. I started to think about which airport I would head for if my primary instruments or electrical system were to fail and I was left with bare bones backups.

Then it dawned on me that I was not in the clouds, I could see for 30 or more miles and I had 600 or more miles of range in the tanks. Why would I pick any airport for a backup instrument approach when I could fly for at least four hours and see what happened to the weather conditions below.

Patience is a virtue. I’m now telling myself a little bit of laziness may also not be bad when it comes to picking the easiest way down.

Photo by Jim Koepnick

Not long ago I was behind a Piper Saratoga at the same altitude—6,000 feet– and flying the same course. The controller asked each of us for our airspeed. The Saratoga pilot reported 170 knots which is what was showing on the airspeed indicator in my Baron. Actually it was 172 or 173 knots, but I rounded down to 170.

Our responses were clearly making no sense to the controller who asked again, and got the same answer from both of us. A Saratoga is a fine piston airplane, but is substantially slower than the Baron. The controller was watching me gain on the airplane ahead and trying to figure out how to keep us apart. He could assign me a slower airspeed to maintain separation, but he needed to know each of our airspeeds in order to issue an effective speed restriction to me.

I was reporting indicated airspeed to the controller which is what controllers want when they ask for your airspeed. The Saratoga pilot was possibly reporting his groundspeed, or perhaps an optimistic estimate of true airspeed, or maybe even the cruise speed he read in a brochure for the airplane. But we were not both indicating the same airspeed.

Airspeed comes in several forms including indicated, true and calibrated. In real life flying we care about indicated airspeed because that’s what makes the airplane fly, and true airspeed, because that’s how fast we move through the air. And controllers only want us to report indicated airspeed because that is the value that keeps airplanes apart.

Indicated airspeed is the air pressure recovered by the pitot tube. This air pressure—called Q—is the air flow that the wing and tail of the airplane experience, and it is that air pressure that provides lift, and controllability. Calibrated airspeed is indicated airspeed corrected for errors in the pitot-static system due to location of the ports on the airframe. In most airplanes the calibrated and indicated airspeeds are quite close together so as pilots we don’t need to be concerned with calibrated airspeed except, perhaps, when using the alternate static system where errors can be significant.

Indicated airspeed only equals the true airspeed when the conditions are standard day temperature with sea level air pressure. Any change from ISA (international standard atmosphere) up or down increases or decreases the true airspeed compared to the indicated. At high altitude the difference between indicated airspeed and true airspeed can be huge, as much as 200 knots or even more. In the non-oxygen altitudes for piston airplanes true airspeed is typically 10, 20, 30 or so knots faster than indicated airspeed. The warmer the air temperature the greater the spread between indicated and true airspeed at a given altitude.

The reason we reference indicated airspeed when maneuvering, or taking off or landing, is because it is a consistent measure of the airflow available to create lift. For example, if you are taking off or landing at a high elevation airport on a hot day the airplane needs to fly at the same indicated airspeed as when it is at lower elevation airports. But at the hot and high airport your true airspeed—and thus your groundspeed on the runway—will be much faster than at a lower airport so you need more runway.

The reason controllers only want us to report our indicated airspeed when they ask for our airspeed is because they only care about relative airspeed between the airplanes being separated. Our true airspeed doesn’t matter to a controller because airplanes he is separating are on the same altitude so the difference between indicated and true will be the same. If both pilots maintain the same indicated airspeed the gap between them will not close.

So, indicated airspeed is what we fly by, and what we tell controllers. True airspeed is what we need to know to flight plan effectively. And that brochure speed is what we need to have at hand for those post flight discussions over a beer.

Every year during simulator training I know a balked landing is on the list of tasks to accomplish. And if I’m training in a jet, the maneuver will almost certainly come at the end of a low weather instrument approach with one engine failed.

I don’t know of an official definition of a balked landing that makes it different from a go-around. The way the balked landing term is generally used is that the actual landing procedure has begun and must be aborted. A go-around generally begins at a higher altitude and lacks the urgency of the balked landing.

So, to me a missed approach at the typical ILS decision height of 200 feet agl is a go-around. There is still plenty of energy available to get the power in, raise the nose and bring the gear up when climb is established. On many airplanes flaps are immediately raised from landing position to approach as soon as you start the go-around.

But a balked landing begins after you have begun to adjust the sink rate, and probably the power in preparation for the landing flare. Of course, in the extreme balked landing case you are in the flare and the power is coming back. Usually those happen in the simulator when a truck or other airplane taxies onto the runway right in front of you.

The reason to practice balked landings is that, I’m happy to say, the need to perform one in normal flying is pretty rare. Other than for practice, I can’t say that I have ever made a balked landing for real. But the situation can and does occur, and when it happens for real it will come as a surprise and there will be no time for review.

I can’t say one reaction is more important than the other, but to stop sinking and start climbing you need to pitch up and add power. Adding power and waiting on the pitch will keep you going down, but pitching up without all available power is going to bleed airspeed off like crazy. The two reactions must be as close as possible to simultaneous. If you’re in a turbine airplane it will take a few seconds to get the full power response, but you still have to get the nose up to halt the descent.

In some airplanes the problem will be keeping the nose from pitching too far up when the power comes in. Two airplanes that come to mind that may be a handful are the Mooney and Cessna 182. In both airplanes trimmed for landing approach with full flaps, a big boost of power is going to raise the nose and you will find yourself pushing hard to maintain the desired attitude until you can retrim. None of us can push away from our body one-handed with the same authority as we can pull so you may need to get that other hand off the throttle and onto the wheel.

In most airplanes flap position during a balked landing is more important than extended landing gear. If the wing flaps are very large and effective for landing, they are probably going to reduce climb performance a lot. Some singles may not climb at all with full flaps if the airplane is heavy and the density altitude high so flap retraction is crucial. On more powerful airplanes the procedure may be to leave the flaps alone until you have a positive rate of climb and the airplane is accelerating.

Of course the most urgent need to make a balked landing would be when you hear the propeller tips striking the pavement. More than one pilot has poured on the power when he realized the wheels are up and made it around to land. But others haven’t. Once the prop strikes the runway the propeller itself, or the engine, may not hold together after full power comes in and you will end up in a critical situation. If the prop hits first, just be happy that you remembered to pay the insurance premium if not to lower the wheels and slide it on. Nobody is ever hurt in unintentional gear-up landings.

This RV is ready for IFR flying

My other passion is sailing. Stancie and I love to sail, but we’re not cruisers. We’re racers. Our objective is to use the natural action of the wind and water on the hull and sails to beat sailors in other boats. It’s sailing with a mission where hundredths of a knot of boat speed count, and where judging (guessing, maybe) where the wind will shift makes the difference between winning and not.

We have many sailor friends who couldn’t give a hoot about racing. They just want to enjoy the general peace and quiet of a sailboat on a nice day. They sail to escape, while we sail to be intensely involved in a mission.

It’s the same with flying. I love to fly, but I fly to complete a mission which is to travel where I want to when I want to on the most predictable possible schedule. Many of my pilot friends fly to enjoy the view and spend time with friends who love airplanes, often old or unique airplanes. Flying someplace on a predetermined schedule—except maybe to fly to Oshkosh every July—just isn’t on their radar.

There is no right or wrong when it comes to racing sailors versus cruisers. Or traveling pilots versus those who are out for a ride on a sunny day. But I do try to convince my cruising sailor friends to give racing a try, and I also try to talk my sunny day only pilot friends into giving IFR flying a try.

The reason I enjoy both racing and flying IFR is because both give you a continuous standard to measure your performance. In the boat you are either ahead or behind which is pretty conclusive evidence of how well you are performing. Flying IFR demands precision in all aspects of flying, and the controllers with their radar—and radar recordings—are keeping tabs on your performance for every moment of the flight.

There’s an old saying among sailors that when two sailboats are in sight of each other there is a race going on in at least one cockpit. Because you both have the same wind and waves to move the boat, even when it is not a structured race, you don’t want the other guy to get ahead of you.

I find it much the same when flying IFR—I am competing with myself to try to fly the most perfect flight. I am not a perfect pilot, and even after all of these years I’m horrified if I somehow bust the plus or minus 100 foot altitude standard that is required for top level flying. Or if I wonder off heading or course by more than the few degrees tolerance expected. Flying IFR is a continuous measure of your precision and long before the controllers spot a deviation from your cleared flight path, you will know if you screwed up.

And when flying IFR the weather, just like in sailboat racing, is always the unknown that spices the challenge. Of course you use all available information to understand the weather conditions ahead—and with up to date weather in the cockpit there is a lot of information—but you still don’t know for sure if that cloud will be bumpy, or icy or close to the ground until you punch into it.

Over half of all active pilots have an instrument rating which I find to be encouraging. But the best estimates are that fewer than 15 percent of pilots are up to date on the various currency requirements to legally make a flight under IFR tomorrow. That shows me that pilots make the effort to earn the IFR rating but many don’t then routinely fly in the system.

I’m interested in the development of a new group called the IMC Club that is forming chapters around the country to get together and talk about flying IFR. The IMC, of course, stands for instrument meteorological conditions which are the restrictions to visibility that prevent you from seeing the horizon so you must rely on your instruments to control the airplane. IFR stands for instrument flight rules and they apply any time you are operating on an IFR clearance in the system no matter how good or bad the weather. Even if you fly IFR all of the time as I do, mostly in unpressurized airplanes at the lower altitudes, you won’t log much over 10 percent of your time as IMC, if even that much. So IMC is clearly the somewhat rare and challenging part of flying IFR.

I think the IMC Club goal of getting pilots together to “hangar fly” their experiences in the system and in the clouds is terrific. Training for the IFR rating is almost entirely artificial with a hood blocking your view outside, but that’s a poor substitute for real IMC flying. And the only way to learn about really flying in the clouds is to do it, and learning from the experiences of others who fly IMC is a big help.

For more information on the IMC Club see http://www.imcclubs.cloverpad.org/. I think you will enjoy the challenge.

There is a great deal of discussion of basic flight training failure, but the airline safety record says we have never done better. The GA accident picture remains little changed and not good, but for U.S. based airlines, we are in an unprecedented and, frankly, almost unbelievably good, safety peroid.

The last U.S. based major jet airline accident to kill a passenger happened in late 2001 when the vertical fin failed on an Airbus departing JFK. In the same more than decade long period the U.S. based regional airlines have had only two fatal accidents.

To show you how good and amazing that record is, consider that before 2001 the longest fatal accident free period for the major airlines in this country has barely been two years. And I’m not sure if the regionals had ever gone more than one year without a fatal crash.

The U.S. based airline accident record is so good it has left us all wringing our hands about weird accidents such as the Dash 8 turboprop at Buffalo two years ago. That was clearly a terrible piece of flying by the crew, but here we are, two years later, still yammering on about that wreck as though similar accidents occurred every year, or even every couple of years. They used to, but they don’t now.

Of course, luck as been on our side when it comes to airline safety in the U.S. If the geese had shot down Sully and Jeff Skiles at a different altitude, or a different location, the results could have been tragedy instead of a miracle ditching. The NTSB records list a fatal accident at Chicago Midway when a Southwest crew slid off the far end of a slippery runway and busted through the fence killing a person. But that person was in a car on the street, not a passenger in the B-737. And other airline crews have run off runways in the past decade, but in every incident no passenger was killed.

But luck, both good and bad, has always played at least some part in the airline safety record so it’s hard for me to believe that over more than a decade good luck has stacked up in our favor at an unusual rate. After all, hitting a flock of geese is bad luck. The good luck came after the bad when Sully and Jeff were able to reach the Hudson River and make an expert ditching exactly where ferry boats crisscross the water every few minutes.

So, if, as some say, the primary training system is so broken, why has the U.S. based airline safety record been so astonishingly good? And the essentially perfect airline safety record comes with a big majority of civilian trained pilots at the controls. The number of airline pilots who got their start in the structured and selective world of military flying has been on the decline for many years, but the safety record has zoomed to unbelievable heights.

There are many possible explanations for the airline safety record over the past decade and my favorite factors are probably at odds with the beliefs of many pilots. I think the two most important ingredients are new avionics and development and enforcement of rigid flying procedures.

By the time this terrific safety record began all major airline jets had TCAS to identify and show an escape route from a potential midair collision. All jet airliners had sophisticated wind shear detection and warning devices. And all airplanes have enhanced EGPWS to warn of an impending collision with terrain.

In the past midair collisions, wind shear and CFIT (controlled flight into terrain) contributed significantly to fatal airline accidents. We now have automated systems to prevent those accidents. And superior takeoff configuration warning systems in nearly all airplanes prevent the flaps up, or out of trim takeoff attempts that have claimed airline jets in the past.

The controllers also help with better radar, and automated systems watching the radar that in turn warn crews of being off course, or too low. Virtually all approaches are flown using radar vectors, and equipment both onboard the airplane and on the ground, tell crews and controllers exactly where the airplane is, where it’s going, and where hazardous weather lurks.

On the human side airline and other jet training has almost totally eliminated the freelance behavior of pilots. There is a procedure for every phase of flight, or every abnormal or emergency condition, and that’s what pilots learn and practice. And nearly all airlines, and a few business jet operators, have programs that monitor how closely pilots abide by the procedures. It’s big brother watching, of course, but following a carefully thought out procedure beats pulling it out of your socks.

Of course, there is the extremely rare event such as losing both engines that can’t have a specific procedure to follow and Sully and Jeff came through perfectly. But that’s the one in a billion event. Compare that to a crew who couldn’t follow the most basic procedure of adding power to maintain airspeed, and pushing forward when the stall warning activates as in the Buffalo crash.

Most of the pilots who have achieved the terrific safety record in U.S. based airlines and business jets learned to fly initially in the GA training system. Put those same pilots in GA airplanes and they have produced the same, not good, unchanged safety record GA has experienced for decades. So clearly it’s not initial training that makes the difference, but the equipment and operating procedures that the major airlines and business jets, and increasingly the regionals, fly. So if it’s not failure of initial training that is the problem for GA safety, what is?

The FAA routinely issues a ruling of equivalent level of safety (ELOS) when certifying airplanes, equipment and various flight operations. An ELOS is the FAA’s finding that an aircraft or aviation operation delivers the same level of safety that the rules require even if what has been approved does not meet the letter of the law. EAA and AOPA are asking the FAA to make an ELOS finding on the requirement for pilots to have a third class medical for recreational flying.

ELOS rulings are essential because the FARs cannot anticipate every possible way safety goals can be achieved. An ELOS does not bypass the objective of the FARs, but allows for an alternate means of achieving the safety goal.

The safety objective of the third class medical certificate is to identify people with health issues that could cause them to be incapacitated while at the controls of an aircraft. As with all FARs, the objective of the third class medical standard is to try to protect the pilot and his passengers, and also to help protect those on the ground who could be injured by a crashing airplane.

I believe the objectives of the medical certification system are good and necessary. But the EAA/AOPA petition to use a driver’s license in place of a third class medical for recreational flying purposes is an ELOS. The key element of the petition that makes it an ELOS  is required aero medical health education and testing for pilots. Training pilots to identify and avoid health risks for pilots would provide the ELOS to the third class medical exam.

Under the medical certification system pilots are examined on a schedule determined by their age and the type of flying they do. Airline captains are required to carry a first class medical and must be examined as often as every six months. Commercial operations require a second class medical certificate that is good for one year. Pilots flying for their own reasons and not being paid to fly need a third class medical every two or five years depending on their age.

Between exams the rules require a pilot of any class of medical to not fly if he has a disqualifying medical condition. Great. Are we trained and tested on how to identify those conditions? No. Who’s opinion matters each day on our fitness to fly? Only our own except on that one day we go to the AME. So pilots of all levels self-certify their medical fitness every day except the one day they go to the AME for the exam.

The medical training and testing component of the EAA/AOPA petition teaches pilots the necessary information to know if a health condition puts them at risk. That would be a first in the history of the FAA and that training is clearly an ELOS to the third class medical.

The other element of the EAA/AOPA petition that provides ELOS for the public is the restriction to flying recreational standards only with a valid driver’s license. The general FAA definition of recreational flying is daylight VFR in a piston airplane with fixed landing gear, a single engine of 180 hp or less, carrying no more than one passenger. The airplane can have more than two seats, but only one passenger can be onboard.

The single passenger limit provides ELOS because the ultimate risk is limited to only two individuals in the airplane. The small size and light weight of airplanes that meet the rule minimizes the damage a crash could cause to those on the ground. That the  risk is no greater for a pilot with a driver’s license flying to recreational standards than the same person with a third class medical in the same airplane is obvious to me. And should be to the FAA.

There are other data to support an ELOS for the petition including that glider and balloon pilots have flown without medical certification for decades. And that Sport Pilots have been flying with a driver’s license instead of medical certificate for nearly seven years and the NTSB has not found a medical issue to be the cause of any accident.

A huge number of pilots want to fly recreationally and most of those find the medical certificate requirement to be costly and burdensome. The pilot population is not growing and we need to keep more pilots active in the types of airplanes they already own and fly, and the EAA/AOPA petition can help do that.

I have hopes this petition will be approved because it is the first to ask for an ELOS. All other petitions have argued that medical certification does no good whatsoever. This petition says the safety goals of medical certification are logical and important but this petition offers an alternate method to achieve those goals which makes it the classic ELOS.

The environmental activist group Friends of the Earth has sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) demanding that the EPA make a finding of endangerment caused by the lead in avgas. The situation sounds ominous, but really wouldn’t change the way, or probably even the timetable, of aviation’s move to a lead-free fuel.

An EPA finding of endangerment is really the first step in a very long, many year process of creating new regulations. The words “finding of endangerment” imply that immediate, or even very quick action is required, but that’s not the case.

When the EPA makes a finding of endangerment it means that a threat to human health and the environment has been identified. Since lead has been recognized as a health and environmental risk for decades it is no surprise that the tiny amount of lead in avgas will eventually be added to the endangerment list. The finding starts the ball rolling to establish a process to eliminate or minimize the threat and in avgas the threat is the presence of lead.

Though the EPA has not yet made a finding of endangerment caused by leaded avgas, the aviation industry and the FAA have been searching for a workable unleaded avgas for years. An EPA finding, even one directed by the courts, will not accelerate the work already going on to find a replacement fuel because the research is and has been going forward.

The EPA has also stipulated that it is the FAA that must regulate aircraft fuels because the risks to safety are so fundamental. The fleet of piston aircraft was certified to operate on the existing avgas and any change in fuel type will require certified changes in at least some aircraft operations and neither the EPA nor the courts have the ability or jurisdiction to do that.

What we know after years of research and study by groups including EAA, AOPA, fuel and engine manufacturers and the FAA, is that there is absolutely no direct replacement fuel for leaded avgas. Without the small amount of lead used in avgas no fuel can exactly match every characteristic and performance factor of 100LL. Perhaps an unleaded fuel can deliver the octane—detonation resistance—of leaded avgas, but even if that’s possible, other important fuel performance factors such as vapor pressure or storage life will be different. Auto fuel can work in some smaller aircraft engines, but absolutely cannot perform in more powerful engines and certainly not in turbocharged engines. It is the larger, more powerful engines that consume the majority of avgas because those engines are on airplanes used for business travel, ag work, fire suppression and even regional airliners while the smaller engines power airplanes used primarily for recreational flying.

Because there is no viable alternative yet to 100LL neither the EPA nor the courts can order piston airplane operators to use fuel B instead of fuel A. There is no fuel B. The search is on, and has been for many years, to create a specification for an alternative fuel, but that goal of creating a new fuel spec and all of the ramifications involved in making a new fuel and getting it into the system, is many years into the future

I’m not trying to minimize the importance of any EPA or court action because finding a 100LL alternative is critical. But nothing is going to change anytime soon. Avgas will continue to be available for years to come and there will be many years needed to make the transition to a new fuel once the fuel becomes available. Now for the price of avgas or any fuel, that’s impossible to predict but I am sure avgas will remain available in the U.S.