A third fuel retailer has announced plans to sell GAMI's G100UL unleaded avgas and in many ways it couldn't be farther from the existing California facilities offering the fuel. Tupelo Aviation Unlimited, in the heart of Mississippi says it will have the high octane lead-free alternative for retail sale in mid January at $6.99 a gallon, 45 cents a gallon more than full-serve 100LL, which it will continue to carry. CEO Corey Gillard said unlike California, where leaded avgas is a hot button political, legal and environmental issue, his was purely a business and marketing decision. "There are so few ways to differentiate yourself in this industry," he said. "We want to be a pioneer, we want to be a leader."
It is good to see some FBO’s taking interest in new products. Would be nice to see some FBO’s selling the UL 94 product so I could fly from Mississippi to California and not have to use the engine damaging 100LL fuel in my airplane.
I would think that if adding UL94 to an airport on my route across the country means taking business from an operator who was not offering a fuel that I preferred and lost of my business means the competitor might consider spending money to provide my preferred Fuel That would be competition. The Mississippi FBO operator in this article is creating competition by offering additional Fuel products and I find no problem with that. it is probably just healthy competition, which is good.
I’m based in Tupelo, a tower-conrolled airport with a 7150 ft runway. The FBO has fuel trucks for 100 LL and Jet fuel. There’s also self-serve fuel that is a mile from the FBO at the North T-hangars. I suspect they will sell the G100UL at the self serve rather than purchase another fuel truck and increase the risk of miss-fueling. Very little self-serve is sold here due to the location away from the FBO and pricing that is not regionally competitive, at $6.44 self and $6.54 full. Smaller airports around here have fuel for $4.50 and one as low as $4.30. I made the argument 6-9 months ago to the FBO director that there was a business opportunity here to increase their self-serve flowage by selling G100UL. Transportation here from Vitol in Louisiana would not be too hard or expensive, about 350 miles. The article says that the G100UL will only be 50 cents per gallon more than their current 100LL.
I’m looking forward to a cleaner engine with elimination of lead from the fuel. As someone that has had a sticking exhaust valve in an IO-550 that was determined to be due lead salt deposits by mass spectroscopy, I’ve been looking forward to G100UL availability.
In time, we will be able to do oil changes less frequently as much of the reason we change the oil at 25-30 hours is to get the lead out of the oil (plus other products of combustion). With time and testing, we may even be able to use synthetic oils with their many advantages, especially longer retention of lubricity, but it will take a lot of testing before any oil company is willing to do so given the prior experience with Mobile 1. My understanding is that lead compounds do not dissolve in synthetic oils, and therefore increased the risk of lead deposits in the engine. Aviation is such a niche market, there may never be an oil company interested in doing so.