I fly planes, and I haven't met a rich owner yet. The typical cessna 150/172 costs less than a new SUV. The rich owners tend to fly kerosene burners.
Also, most small-engine planes can already burn regular unleaded autogas. It's just the high-compression engines that require the lead. The FAA, AOPA and others are working on developing alternatives, but it takes time. Perhaps they should have done this sooner.
"Rich" is a pretty flexible yardstick. Somebody who can afford to drop the price of a new car on a hobby item is rich compared to most Americans. I recall a thing a while back about how hardly anyone in America will admit to being rich, because they all measure themselves against someone even richer. "Sure, I have three houses and a yacht, but I'm not rich! It's not like I can afford a private island!"
Your points about engines and fuel make sense, though.
Well I'm pretty sure I'm less rich than Cory if he is a MS employee.
I pay about $85/hour to fly and don't own a plane. If I lived in the USA it would be $68/hr due to lower gas prices. I think the majority of Americans can afford to spend $68/month on their hobby (assuming they flew once a month).
There are high school students who drop thousands of $$$ into their hobbies. My hobby (computers and video games) was cheap in comparison to those getting tuned-up small cars as made famous in movies and racing games. $68/hr is a fairly inexpensive hobby indeed.
> I also have to wonder where high-school students who drop thousands of dollars into their hobbies are getting their money from. Parents?
I often wondered the same thing, given that neither I nor my parents had anywhere near that much money to fritter away.
I think it comes down to parents directly or indirectly though. You can make a fair amount of money with a summer job and part-time job the rest of the year, when you don't have to pay for rent, food, etc.
It becomes harder to maintain a hobby once you have to move out and live on your own.
Depends on the age. I know when I was a teenager, I worked since I was allowed to (16). So, part time jobs, summer jobs and saving --that's where teenagers get the extra money. It's relatively easy to save money when you don't have to pay for room and board, as it were.
> most small-engine planes can already burn regular unleaded autogas. It's just the high-compression engines that require the lead
So they could change engines, but would rather continue to poison us to save the cost/loss of performance. AOPA is fighting against it in the bureaucratic way, via numerous stalling tactics, for 40 years now:
Well as I've pointed out above, I don't own a plane and you yourself appear to be a lot richer than me.
The majority of private pilots I've met are hardworking people (not rich) who love aviation. They either rent from a flying club or partnership, or own a cheap cessna 150/172 or homebuilt. You can buy a decent buck 50 for about $20k, which doesn't make you rich if you own one. The average HN programmer earns $150k+ if they work at Microsoft (like you), Google or facebook in silicon valley. That's fairly rich, and it's a bit hypocritical of you to be calling me rich when my income for the past few years has been around $40k. I used to earn over 100k 15 years ago, but I chose lifestyle over stress and being rich.
I pay $50/hr dry to fly a friend's plane, and he's not rich. He is retired and never earned much money during his career. He can only afford to own a plane because he was left money by his father, and also because his wife has a good pension. He absolutely loves flying, so that is what he has decided to spend his retirement money on. He drives a falling-apart car from the early 90s.
Getting back to the discussion: the high compression engines that run avgas tend to be in light twins, which are mostly used to train airline pilots, air-taxis, medevac, etc. There certainly are some rich people with high performance piston planes, but that is probably a minority. At the moment there simply isn't any viable engine replacement for these planes. AOPA is actually working hard with industry groups to find a drop-in replacement for avgas, which will work in all these engines. It's not an easy thing to do, as you have to make sure the new fuel isn't going to damage the engine, cause an engine failure, etc.
Perhaps they should have started looking for a replacement earlier. Part of the problem is that there isn't too much innovation in aircraft engines, in order to avoid possible problems and because it's very expensive to develop (and aircraft sales are a few orders of magnitude lower than car sales). Even new aircraft piston engines don't tend to have ECU/FADECs (or even electronic timing).
1) There are enough factual errors in that article to show that the author doesn't know what he's talking about.
2) Small airplanes aren't necessarily expensive, so you don't necessarily have to be rich to afford them. For instance, there's a Cessna 150 in good condition for sale on ebay for $16500 right now.
3) The FAA is actively working on unleaded replacements.
You've got plenty of replies criticizing your "rich" bit, but, well, you deserve at least one more.
Something should probably be done about the use of leaded fuel in general aviation. However, trying to turn it into class warfare (while every single pilot I know, and I know a lot of them, is middle-class) severely hurts your argument.
The average plane owner is richer than the average car owner. The average plane owner needs the plane less than the average car owner needs the car. The average car isn't burning leaded fuel.
I would still say "rich jerks" is overstating things, but there's not zero relevance.
I don't think that's the same thing at all. The mention of "(rich)" was an absolute statement, not a relative one, which portrayed light aircraft owners as wealthy people hurting the populace just so they could have a little more money.
I live in China and regularly paint car owners as rich jerks in my head, considering that they are very expensive and most people don't own one. Then they drive like they own the road, don't yield at all, run pedestrians off the street, drive on the side of the freeway when there's traffic (I look on from a taxi)...
Give me an electric powered tri (trash) cycle anyday.
Talk to the FAA, who have made it so expensive to upgrade/update anything related to airplanes. There is a marginally viable aftermarket parts market for these engines now, but for a long time owners were strictly limited to OEM, salvage, and remanufactured parts. Also, the number of older GA Airplanes, and antique/warbirds in service are so small, it's got to be nothing compared to the exposure from thirty years ago.
Are you so sure they're rich? All the small airplane owners I have known drove beat-up old cars (often with a "My other car is an airplane" bumper sticker) in order to afford their aviation habit.
That article does not say what you think it does. It is 50% of new lead pollution, not exposure. According to the reporting of the original lead::crime theory, most of current lead exposure is due to lead dust that was created during the decades of leaded automobile gasoline. The dust has settled in urban areas and it gets kick up by weather and people breath that.
http://www.treehugger.com/aviation/leaded-gas-banned-around-...