One summer long ago and far away, I worked as a line boy at the local airport. The job isn’t called that anymore, but it involved fueling based and transient aircraft. We had two installed pumps dispensing avgas and two trucks. One truck pumped both blue gas (100/130 octane, $0.49 a gallon) and red gas (80/87 octane, for $0.47) while the other carried Jet A, also at $0.49/gallon, as I recall. I’ve fueled everything from the Cessna 150 I soloed that summer to Learjet 23s, Beech 99 Airliners in scheduled operations and even the odd DC-3, to which I’ve added more oil than “my” 150 had fuel capacity. Yes, I have stories.
With that experience under my belt, I’ve always had a professional interest in many aspects of the fueling operations at general aviation airports. The advent of self-serve avgas pumps didn’t faze me one bit, for example. I’ve also watched closely as the industry evolved from delivering two grades of avgas to only one, and some of the trials and tribulations that went along with it, lead fouling of low-compression engines, for example, along with the disappearance of a job I once held.
