Photos courtesy Lars Gleitsmann

Lars Gleitsmann.

Imagine one day a government agency tells all diesel pickup truck owners that they can't drive their trucks anymore because the Association of Horse Owners has determined that the trucks pose an endangerment to the health of the general public.

And since that organization has influence over that government agency, they hereby outlaw your truck, business and, oh yes, your whole town can't stay where it is either.

Sounds ludicrous? Sure does! Completely crazed? Quite so! Unfortunately this is exactly the kind of reality that Alaskan pilots and our rural communities are facing, because the EPA wants to outlaw the fuel that 95 percent of all Alaskan commercial planes HAVE TO USE. In Alaska 82 percent of our settlements cannot be reached by the use of the national road system, according to the Alaska Department of Transportation, so airplanes matter more to us than to folks in any other state of the union by an order of magnitude.

Sure enough, there are lots of people in Anchorage that have never visited the Bush, have never lived out there, that haven't ever even flown in a small airplane. To them the problem may not seem so important or tragic at first glance because they feel it's a problem far removed from them. But 1.2 million people work blue-collar, middle-class jobs in general aviation in the United States, and it's the last industry we have left where "Made in China" is not YET a factor. Strangely enough, the biggest problem of this industry seems to be the Federal Government, which keeps piling on more and more and more regulations. Could you imagine, driving your personal private car and having to obey and comply with 790 Federal laws and rules? Seems impossible, yet it's an everyday normal reality in aviation. People claim its necessary for safety...Lack of safety is perceived because media reports only show any crash or incident, sensationalism makes memory, and millions of safe perfect flights do not.

The latest outrage: The FCC just published a new rule that outlaws all existing Emergency Locator Transmitters by Aug. 1 of this year! The companies that make these things could not even make a quarter of the number of the 400K required replacements before the deadline! Crazy ... if the FCC has it their way in a month 80 percent or more of all our nation's planes would be grounded. Who dreams up such nightmare rules? How can something so out of touch with reality become a law?

The last big federal aviation law fiasco, the "oxygen-bottle-transportation-ban" may have actually killed people in the Bush simply because the ones who dreamed it up failed to create an Alaska exemption, since they couldn't imagine the existence of commercial planes smaller than 50 seats or the existence of villages without access to the road system.

Hard to imagine that well-paid "professionals" with the power to create laws can be uninformed and unaware to that extent.

Now we are facing a very near future where the price of transportation in the Bush will multiple by six, or where the service will not even be available. Bear with me on the complicated technicalities that make up the issue.

Airplane engines are VERY different than car engines (more on THAT LATER) and the current production engines with enough power to be commercially viable (180 HP or more) need at least the 2ppm lead in the fuel to keep running for more than a few hours (more on THAT also later). Research on lead-free fuels for these very reliable and powerful engines is going on for over 20 years. An Coordinating Research Council (CRC) Unleaded AVGAS Development Panel in charge of the testing of these proposed alternative fuels has so far tested 279 of them, and their boss said to me "not even one was even close."