The trick is that there’s two tiers of expensive for GA:
- People buying, say, a new SR22 for $779,000
- People buying, say, a 1976 Cessna 172 for $72,000 and splitting it with 3 friends
Having Cirrus work on, say, regular Mogas by contracting Continental to develop a new engine would be expensive but the buyers aren’t particularly price sensitive and amortized across the typical lifetime of an aviation engine design (the IO-550 in the SR22 was first delivered in 1983) likely wouldn’t hurt much.
Trying to come up with an engine swap for the O-320 in that ‘76 172 is a whole other can of worms. Who’s going to even sign off on it? The whole aircraft is 50 years old and designed and certificated for that specific engine. There’s no financial incentive for Cessna to do it, and even if they did, the cost to do the swap would likely significantly exceed the financial capacity of many owners.
I absolutely would love to see a financially viable way to get past this! The use of LL fuel in 2022 is tragic. On the other hand, killing off a big chunk of the GA industry and leaving it solely in the purview of the Wealthy and not just dedicated hobbyists… that sucks.
For context, my family has an old Piper J3 sitting in a hangar on a farm. It definitely needs an overhaul, but to get it back in the air would likely be a low 5-figure bill; retrofitting a Mogas engine onto it in such a way that it doesn’t need to be categorized as “experimental” would be… prohibitive.
Thanks for this context. I'm not a pilot but I can absolutely relate to the joy such a machine could give.
I'd like to ask one thing further: Do you think the existence of these older cheaper planes is holding back the development of upstart companies aiming for a price point that's closer to the Cessna 172 than the SR22? If leaded fuel engines were banned by the FAA today, would that create an opportunity for new entries, maybe with EV/hybrid engines? Or are there fundamentally different manufacturing economics to safely put something like that up in the air at that price point today?
There are already alternative engines in wide use (particularly on ultralights and light-sport aircraft) that can run on regular, unleaded gasoline, like the Rotax 912[0]. The issue, as others have pointed out, is getting these newer engines certified for use on existing, older planes. This would require extensive testing to get a Supplemental Type Certificate (“STC”) to allow the engine to be installed on a certified aircraft (think anything manufactured, like a Cessna 172 or Piper Cub.)
> Do you think the existence of these older cheaper planes is holding back the development of upstart companies aiming for a price point that's closer to the Cessna 172 than the SR22?
Things in aviation are incredibly expensive because of how much it costs to have things certified by the FAA for safety and reliability. I'm no legal expert but I don't think an upstart company has much wiggle room to get around that if they want to legally sell their aircraft in the US. As an example Cessna 172s are still made and AFAIK the modern ones haven't required leaded fuel for some time. A 172 is just about the most basic small airplane you can get but today a new one costs as much as a house, about $400k.
- People buying, say, a new SR22 for $779,000
- People buying, say, a 1976 Cessna 172 for $72,000 and splitting it with 3 friends
Having Cirrus work on, say, regular Mogas by contracting Continental to develop a new engine would be expensive but the buyers aren’t particularly price sensitive and amortized across the typical lifetime of an aviation engine design (the IO-550 in the SR22 was first delivered in 1983) likely wouldn’t hurt much.
Trying to come up with an engine swap for the O-320 in that ‘76 172 is a whole other can of worms. Who’s going to even sign off on it? The whole aircraft is 50 years old and designed and certificated for that specific engine. There’s no financial incentive for Cessna to do it, and even if they did, the cost to do the swap would likely significantly exceed the financial capacity of many owners.
I absolutely would love to see a financially viable way to get past this! The use of LL fuel in 2022 is tragic. On the other hand, killing off a big chunk of the GA industry and leaving it solely in the purview of the Wealthy and not just dedicated hobbyists… that sucks.
For context, my family has an old Piper J3 sitting in a hangar on a farm. It definitely needs an overhaul, but to get it back in the air would likely be a low 5-figure bill; retrofitting a Mogas engine onto it in such a way that it doesn’t need to be categorized as “experimental” would be… prohibitive.