This fuel was on its way out about two years ago. I’m surprised it’s still being stocked.
Interesting! Air BP has recently offered my club UL91 to a price substantially lower than what Hjelmco charges for 91/96UL. We are sceptical to the offer as we feel that the low price is only an attempt to take a market share from Hjelmco and will be increased eventually if we make the switch.
We buy 100LL from BP and they have, of course, noticed that the volume has dropped by some 80% since we switched to Hjelmco 91/96UL for our club aircraft a year ago.
Airborne_Again wrote:
Interesting! Air BP has recently offered my club UL91 to a price substantially lower than what Hjelmco charges for 91/96UL
This is all about organizing. You can buy directly from Air BP at substantially lower prices than with 2-3 middle men. UL91 is a much cheaper fuel than 100LL (20-30%).
LeSving wrote:
This is all about organizing. You can buy directly from Air BP at substantially lower prices than with 2-3 middle men. UL91 is a much cheaper fuel than 100LL (20-30%).
We already buy 100LL directly from Air BP and 91/96UL directly from Hjelmco without middlemen. 91/96UL is about 10% cheaper than 100LL, but Air BP’s UL91 offering was about 10% cheaper still.
What is the standard gross margin on avgas sold at GA airfields, around Europe?
I know in the UK it is about 30p per litre. And TOTAL were often charging something similar for 91UL as for 100LL. However the big unmentioned factor in this is the relative volume. If you buy 10% 91UL and 90% 100LL then 91UL might cost even more than 100LL 
So any price comparisons need to disclose the volumes too.
A friend of mine manages a big petrol station and they juggle this all the time. However they also sign long term contracts which (I don’t know the detail) fix the margins for X months or whatever. It’s a different business, with much smaller gross margins than avgas – in the low single % digits I believe – but with huge volumes.
Only somebody who runs an airfield is going to know the real detail first-hand.
Then you get variations due to logistics, and maybe due to a “screw them” policy. For example at Sitia, Crete, they get it in drums, and it is some €3/litre i.e. 1.5x more than it might be in N Europe. But Elba, Italy, was €3.50 when I went there in 2014 which was almost 2x more than just up the road on Corsica and I don’t believe Elba cannot buy avgas from the same outfit which say Calvi gets theirs. Both have to come by ship. I wonder if there is corruption?
Peter wrote:
Only somebody who runs an airfield is going to know the real detail first-hand.I do. Well, not alone.
I would like to resurrect this thread. My club are considering switching from Hjelmco 91/96UL to BP 91UL. I’ve heard rumours/claims of engine damage in Norway after using UL91 and that BP has problems distributing UL91 in Sweden.
Have anyone else (@LeSving?) heard anything about this? It may of course all be FUD.
We are lucky to have George Braly, behind G100UL fuel, on our APS seminar in Kortrijk (EBKT) on 23-24-25 June 2017. He is going the STC route. I am sure he will answer the many questions about this unleaded 100 fuel he has been testing for the last several years.
UL91 in N-reg airframes
There seem to be a dozen UL91 threads here which our Leader hasn’t yet merged so I thought I might as well start another
Lycoming’s Service Instruction No. 1070V approves use of UL91 and 91/96UL in a lot of engines, and EASA’s CS-SC202b (enjoy!) automagically extends that approval to airframes when “the engine installed on the aircraft is approved for use of unleaded Avgas UL 91 and the aircraft is already approved for operation with conventional Avgas…”.
AFAICS, (perhaps because UL91 isn’t exactly a “hot” product in the USA), the FAA has yet to issue such a blanket airframe-level approval and (equally understandably) most US airplane manufacturers also couldn’t give a toss.
So where does that leave a poor Scottish farmer whose N-reg Maule tractor has an 0-360-C1F approved for UL91, but whose Flight Manual limitations still include “Fuel: 100/100LL minimum aviation gasoline” and who is considering ordering a bowser-fill of unleaded Avgas?
Is it fair to assume that nobody (not even a public servant) could be enough of an @sshole to say that the grade of fuel to be used in an airplane depends only on the first letter of its call sign?
