Contra Costa County Public Works announced that unleaded aviation fuel is now available at Buchanan Field Airport in Concord, marking a step toward reducing lead emissions from piston-powered aircraft.
According to the county’s Airports Division, the new fuel option was made possible through the efforts of Pacific States Aviation, a fixed base operator at the airport. The company received its first delivery of Swift’s UL94 unleaded aviation gasoline on Dec. 30, 2025, and began dispensing the fuel in February.
UL94 is an unleaded aviation gasoline designed for many piston-engine aircraft. While it cannot be used in every plane, officials say roughly 70% of the U.S. piston aircraft fleet is compatible with the fuel. At Buchanan Field, all 13 of Pacific States Aviation’s flight training aircraft will use the new unleaded fuel.
County officials said the transition follows about a year of work by Pacific States Aviation and the Airports Division to bring a commercially viable unleaded fuel option to the county.
Officials say the new fuel option is intended to improve environmental conditions while supporting flight training and general aviation activity at Buchanan Field.
Finally, all the problems in this area are solved!
Gross they have been burning leaded fuel above us forever until now.
All this clean air stuff for years but the planes above have been raining it down on us unknowningly.
It’s been in the media for years
What’s the octane rating?
Can I taxi my car up to the pump?
Years ago we used to walk right out to the fuel truck with five gallon cans and buy fuel for the race car.
There are still local sources for performance oriented fuel.
For far more detail on what’s going on see https://www.contracosta.ca.gov/10354/Unleaded-Aviation-Gasoline
… loooooong time coming … but did they put hardened valve seats in the aircraft engines? …. I bet the answer is noooooo
no lead, no lube. https://generalaviationnews.com/2025/07/25/everyone-beware/
$10.42 a gallon?? yikes
A learning moment, never knew (because never had cause to look at/research) whether the fuel used in aircraft used leaded or unleaded fuel. Now I know. A question I have (but will not likely research) is if there is a performance issue with unleaded, will we see more aircraft incidents because of this?
lead is used to lube the valve seats to prevent erosion. Unleaded vehicles have hardened (stellite) seats to avoid this. Without this in legacy engines the valves (primarily exhaust) will sink in the head as the old seats were cut into the head or bronze was used. This causes burnt valves and a hell of a misfire, kinda of bad at 10000ft.
Gavin let’s his friends with planes have fuel and expects the rest of us to get on electric.