AOPA et al File Complaint Protesting California 100LL Ban

News Discussion
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The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) and local co-complainants in California filed a 47-page complaint last week with the U.S. Department of Transportation/Federal Aviation Administration against Santa Clara County in California. The complaint asks the FAA to reach a determination “without further delay” to a previous filing protesting the county’s 2022 “unprecedented” fuel ban on 100 Low Lead (100LL) aviation fuel.

This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.avweb.com/aviation-news/new-aopa-filing-challenges-santa-clara-countys-latest-legal-maneuver
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AOPA get out of the way!

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Too little, too late. The alphabets should have gotten behind Mogas as the ideal, low-cost, lead-free aviation fuel, 50 years ago when the FAA granted the first STCs to the EAA. Note that all of the engines from world-leader Rotax are designed to run best on Mogas. It’s the same for popular engines for homebuilts from Viking and UL Power. We are so backwards in this country!

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The what-if-ers and what-about-ists (mostly old guys that hate everything new) are unwittingly providing the backing for those who make money off there continuing to be a problem.

Misfuelings happen all the time. It’s not the fault of the fuel.

And if you can mix 100LL with G100UL then you can mix 94UL with G100UL because 94UL IS 100LL, just without the lead added.

Thats how desperate some are to preserve the government cash cow.

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I always felt this was a push by liberal elites to complain about yet another miniscule trivial point on the path to utopia and perfection. Frankly I would prefer to have a more logical and planned approach than the CA elitists telling me what I can and cannot do with my aircraft. Those of you who find this annoying, so be it, but I do not gauge progress by sweeping changes made at the expense of the people doing the flying!

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What you need to realize is it’s not you vs GAMI and Swift. It’s you, me, GAMI, and Swift stuck, unarmed, in the crossfire between federal and state interests.

IMO it’s the feds that are most in the wrong because unleaded is a huge net gain for GA. But, even after the transition to UL, the state ideologues won’t be happy because it’s still “carbon.”

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If you want anyone to take you seriously you’ll stop throwing around “liberal
elites” and “bootlickers” and other intentional triggers. Nobody wants to hear political BS and insults. You seem intelligent, so use your words in an intelligent way to make your point.

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Santa Clara County fired a shot across the bows of the FAA. the fuel suppliers listened and provided an alternative. The ASTM spec is a performance spec with some requirements that are NOT Octane rating related. The Difference between the ASTM and the GAMI spec are minimal. Lead is a KNOWN health problem and has been eliminated or controlled in nearly all applications EXCEPT this one fuel. The ingredients of the competing fuels can be tested for mix ability in 5 minutes OR if you want to be fully gaunter in a stinking 5 gallon can with a gallon of each mix and let sit a month to see if there is an obvious reaction. these types of mid cut petroleum distillates are quite non reactive (except for ignition). ANY prier on petroleum chemistry or the Chemical handbook will show this. it is time for the FAA to declare these fuels acceptable get of the pot and go back to Washington.,

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Someone more learned than I can hopefully clear up a question about leaded fuel exposure. If exposure to 100LL is so detrimental to human existence, why do I keep reading stories of healthy older pilots who spent years fueling planes at FBO’s to pay for their entry into flying. Assuming all the anti 100LL information is true wouldn’t the population of former ramp workers with extensive exposure be demonstrating negative health effects? Inquiring minds want to know.

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AOPA: “ It is dangerous to create fragmented fuel availability for the piston fleet.” I find this statement very troubling because it virtually rules out the phaseout of lead that already has begun. Are we to wait until there is a single fuel universally adopted to the exclusion of all others? Is anything short of that “dangerous”? Was it dangerous to have 87 octane available alongside 91 or 100? Waiting until there is a perfect silver bullet for all piston airplanes with no “fragmented” availability is just a recipe for inaction.

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If a product is good, why does it have to be mandated? Let airports offer the fuel of their choice and let the market decide.

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How about the FAA enforcing their rules that the local airport authority agreed to accepting federal funds? Unfortunately when the FAA allowed Santa Monica to shorten its runway and then eventually close, the FAA lost a lot of credibility on enforcing agreements on federal funding.

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Or worse what happened to Meigs in Chicago!

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For those to don’t know the background (and only read this article), this is about a 2 year old Part 16 investigation that the FAA has not ruled on and AOPA is asking them to make a determination after the County again asked for a dismissal. Go read the docket linked in the filing. The County has been very evasive and used delay tactics in their dealings with the FAA.

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Some of this is getting tiring… Really makes me wonder about pilots and knowledge of their engines and fuel. Mogas at 87-91 octane won’t work in a 100 octane engine. The misleading “Lead Studies” at RHV and Michigan by Business School Professor Zahran correlated a series of bad assumptions and linked to research showing high blood lead levels in young children were harmful. He ignored actual sources of lead in blood near the airport including paint, plumbing, soil, highway paints, and airborne from Asia, as documented by UC Berkeley. That said, the lead ban at RHV was actually a tactic as part of the efforts to close the airport by a group of politicians who’ve been trying since 1995. They knew lead would anger the parents near the airport, and it worked. They suppressed county-funded studies by engineering firms and the EPA finding no airborne lead or ground lead in excess of EPA standards.
All that said, the solution is going to be an unleaded 100 octane fuel for existing engines and aircraft that has a viable ASTM Spec and is licensed, refined and distributed by the major oil companies like Chevron and Philips. It will start to happen in 2025, but will take a lot of time to roll out into national distribution. The lawsuit in Santa Clara County isn’t likely to change much, as the politicians are dug in and the county has 130 lawyers on staff, plus unlimited budget for outside counsel. Pretty easy to assume they can stall til 2031, when the airport is likely to close.

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Ban EVs and Chardonnay in California, not 100LL

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I agree and took the offensive words out.

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Most of the commentors in this thread are uninformed about the actual situation. The County are the ones who started this by banning 100LL despite there being no alternative fuel at the time, and this is in direct violation of FAA Grant Assurances.

Multiple pilots at the RHV airport reached out to AOPA to help them engage the County, and the FAA, to advocate for the FAA to force the County to stick to their grant assurance agreement by reintroducing 100LL, without deterring them in any way from exploring the new unleaded fuels that are emerging (AOPA is very supportive of getting to an unleaded world, provided it’s done safely). AOPA filed the recent document simply to push the FAA to act. The FAA has been deferring any ruling on this for a long time and local pilots are frustrated that the County is dragging its feet and the FAA is not doing their job either. AOPA is trying to help.

Regarding the GAMI fuels there, it’s a good thing that there’s finally an alternative for 100LL dependent airplanes. However, the notice AOPA put out about misfueling risk is correct. GAMI fuel has NOT been tested with SWIFT fuel, only with 100LL so in the event someone loaded up on GAMI fuel, and then flew up to San Carlos in their 172 and purchased a SWIFT STC then loaded up on SWIFT fuel, there’s been no testing that these two fuels are compatible and will run fine. In fact, so far the message on the street is that they’re NOT compatible, they’re each only compatible with 100LL (sounds strange, but this is appears to be true at this stage). AOPA, along with EAGLE more broadly, are pushing for the new fuel providers to test compatibility with each other, but none of them to date are motivated to do that, since if they can get to market first, and secure the lead, then they might achieve a “winner takes all” outcome. For all of us, we’d of course prefer multiple options, and we want all the fuels to be compatible with each other, but that’s not yet where GAMI, SWIFT, and VP/Lyondell are in their efforts so all we can do is keep pressure across the board to keep testing, and pushing them to seek compatibility, if the chemistry will allow it (again, the rumor is that the fuels can’t be compatible, but we need the fuel makers, and the FAA, to determine if this is true or not).

In the interim, what AOPA and the RHV pilots are advocating for is to ensure 100LL remains an option at all airports until such time as we get at least one, and ideally a few, credible 100LL alternatives. GAMI appears to have exactly this right now, though Cirrus and Lycoming have said they don’t approve of the fuel because it’s STC based, not ASTM based, and therefore there may be materials compatibility issues, which is just throwing some extra hurdles into the mix that the industry is pushing hard to overcome…

We’re close to having at least one great alternative to 100LL, we’re just not quite there so we need to keep pushing. We all want a great unleaded alternative, since engines should ultimately be better off in that state, as one person above said… We all need to keep pushing for this outcome and encourage as many opportunities to get the new fuels into planes in as safe an environment as possible while everyone learns and we line up all the involved stakeholders (fuel producers, fuel transporters, fuel storage providers, component makers, aircraft producers, engine producers, …)…

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Hmm. Are you claiming this based on chemistry expertise and test results, or this just what your intuition tells you? Because sometimes the real world does not behave intuitively.

Would you be willing to put your own money on the line, indemnifying people who mixed 94UL with G100UL on your say-so, then trusted their lives to you by flying with that mixture?

If not, maybe you should not make such claims quite so confidently until test results are in.