As a side effect, this would completely destroy the pipeline for commercial aviation (think big jet) pilots. Pretty much everyone starts on small crafts and then proceeds to burn hundreds of hours of avfuel in the process of getting to their commercial licenses. Considering the scale and importance of the aviation sector, as well as the ongoing shortage of trained pilots in the field today, the results of your policy would be catastrophic.
The industry is rapidly trying to move to do two things, 1. remove lead from the fuel, this is noted by other commenters. And 2. Pushing for more electric GA.
Pilots don't exactly like getting their hands covered in lead when they check fuel, much less dumping it into the atmosphere when they fly, but it's still an unfortunate fact of life. Times are absolutely changing though, and the future looks bright.
North America has gotten off easy by pushing the training onto pilots themselves.
If banning leaded gas leads to qualified pilot shortage, the industry only has itself to blame for failing to train the people it needs.
Lufthansa at least (and maybe most big euro flag carriers?) runs its own “ab initio” training, where it takes non-pilots and makes them into pilots with a job.
Not sure if there’s a shortage of skilled pilots today as flight counts are still down like 20% in USA vs 2019, and generally a sharper decline elsewhere.
The industry is rapidly trying to move to do two things, 1. remove lead from the fuel, this is noted by other commenters. And 2. Pushing for more electric GA.
Pilots don't exactly like getting their hands covered in lead when they check fuel, much less dumping it into the atmosphere when they fly, but it's still an unfortunate fact of life. Times are absolutely changing though, and the future looks bright.