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Old April 23rd 05, 06:37 PM
Chris
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"Jim" wrote in message ...
Jay Honeck wrote:

So, to summarize: Yes, there is fewer GA in Europe. But even if you
would
wipe all avgas taxes, there wouldn't be more.


You admit that predatory taxation has added 25% to the cost of GA in
France
(which is a gross under-estimation, BTW) -- and in the same breath say
that
it has NO impact on it?

That is the most absurd assertion I've seen in Usenet -- and I've seen
some
whoppers over the years.


Well let's go back to the premise of the post, that avgas costs $7.50 a
gallon
in France. Avgas in France would be priced in Euros, so somebody's
converting
Euros to US dollars using the current conversion rate. That's
mathematically
accurate, but doesn't tell the whole story. The dollar is very weak to
the
euro right now, which affects Americans buying European goods and
Europeans
buying American goods, but doesn't affect Europeans buying domestic
products as
much. For example, if the price of the dollar versus euros fell tomorrow
to
1/2 of what it is today, it would appear that avgas would cost USD 15.00 a
gallon. This would appear to American to be much more expensive, but
would not
really change what avgas would cost to a French(wo)man in France.

European countries tend to tax consumption higher, the US doesn't. One
reason
avgas is kept expensive is because autogas is very expensive to encourage
public transit and excellent high speed rail service. If avgas would be
priced
lower then autogas, there would be an incentive to burn avgas on the road
(which wouldn't do cat converter much good.) Note that Jet-A is much
cheaper
in Europe. This is another reason driving the diesel piston aviation
engine
and several European companies are leading this technology.

Aviation gasoline will continue to get more expensive in the US, and
eventually
may not be available at any price. It can be found (in the US as of last
week) selling at $4.82/US Gallon so you can say that the US is working
hard to
catch up with France, and that's without all of those European taxes as
well.
Avgas is a boutique fuel that must be specially handled and is produced
in
very limited quantities compared to other products, with a lot of
liability for
the slightest mishap. More and more corporate and other high consumption
aviation gas consumption has been shifted to aircraft that burn Jet A,
further
decreasing the economies of scale for 100ll. Also very importantly, it
contains a *lot* of tetraethyl lead (despite that LL designation), and
leaded
autogas was eventually banned by 1996 in the US for a good reason.

Surprisingly essence avec plomb (super) is still available in France,
although
it does cost more then sans plomb so it isn't purchased nearly as much. .

On the price of gasoline. In the UK 82% of the price of gasoline is made up
of taxes. Therefore when the cost of the raw material doubles in price the
impact on the final price of the gasoline autogas or avgas is much smaller
than in the US.

Added to the fact that oil is priced in dollars anyway, the deterioration in
the value of the dollar has mitigated to some extent the increase in the oil
costs.

The other fact is that TEL is made in the UK and guess what, the dollar's
decline has made that more expensive. So the cost of AVGAS in the US is
doubly hit. Whereas TEL costs in Europe have not changed.