Blows my mind we are going to have commercial electric planes BEFORE they bother to get poisonous lead out of avgas for decades after knowing it was deadly
As crazy as it sounds, getting a conventional (as opposed to eVTOL) aircraft in the air is easier than replacing the fuel thousands of legacy aircraft engines.
Sure, but that’s a lobbying thing. AVgas isn’t what runs jet engines (as I’m sure you know), it’s what runs hobbyist planes.
And given how many other externalities there are to hobbyist flying (noise, airports on prime land, etc.) US hobby pilots find their way onto various political committees almost as matter of survival.
It also doesn’t hurt that the average hobbyist pilot is a wealthy white man above 40.
Lobbying by pilots might redirect some money to upgrade someone's favorite small airport but their influence pales in comparison to long standing national security doctrine. Pilots and airports are part of our emergency infrastructure, the kind you don't think you need until the worst happens like a natural disaster. The FAA, FEMA, and the DoD take that kind of preparedness very seriously so they pretty much refuse to come down on private aviation as long as there's not enough PPLs for their liking.
Unrelated, but wow. From having a super crappy popup, TC and friends went to 3 clicks to turn off all "legitimate" interest permissions. That’s actually quite impressive.
But why did they think it was a scam? The linked article only claims an 8 minute flight, so if it's concern about battery weight (which is the only concern I can think of) then the test flight still doesn't really answer that.
