Wow, very angry and uninformed comment. No airplane owners are lobbying for lead. As a pilot with a personal airplane that runs on avgas, we all want lead to go away too. But it's a problem with FAA regulations, and an infrastructure problem where every airport nationwide needs to have separate fuel tanks/trucks with leaded fuel and the newer lead-free alternatives simultaneously, which is a massive expense. Plus, there is no consensus on which lead-free alternative is safest for old engines, so we're still waiting on data.

California has a few airports that are stocking the lead-free alternatives, but that's about it.

But yes, blame the small aircraft owners if it makes you feel better.

> "piston engine aircraft carry virtually no vital role in anything except people flying them for fun"

I guess we just shouldn't train new pilots then.

Piston aircraft are vital to training new pilots. Without the piston fleet, you wouldn't have anybody flying anything larger.

Not to mention they're frequently used for air ambulance flights, survey work, and law enforcement. The "satellite" view on most online mapping tools is recorded from a piston aircraft.

Also, the current proposed plan is to migrate off of leaded gasoline for most of the country by 2030, which is actually quite ambitious given that acceptable alternative fuels didn't exist until literally a few years ago.

Piston-engine aircraft both have much more vital roles than people flying them for fun (for example they form practically all of "last mile" air service as well as pretty much all of ag flying) and very much do not have viable alternatives as far as both cost and operational efficiency go.