This fireside chat recap is from FLYING’s “What’s Next in General Aviation” Virtual Event on Wednesday.
FIRESIDE CHAT TOPIC: Two of GA’s largest companies and service providers are working together to bring sustainable aviation fuel to the market.
DETAILS: JSSI’s Chairman Emeritus and Special Advisor Louis Seno updates us on the progress.
SPEAKER: Sino is chairman emeritus and special advisor for JSSI.
BIO: Seno provides counsel to the JSSI board of directors and represents JSSI at important business aviation conferences, events, and meetings. Prior to joining JSSI, he held senior management positions at the business aircraft units of Boeing Capital Corp. and GE Capital Solutions.
KEY QUOTES FROM SINO:
“I grew up in a flying family. My father was a very avid general aviation pilot and a staunch EAA member; we were always building an airplane in the basement as a kid and virtually ever since I learned to read we always seemed to have a copy of FLYING Magazine around the house and that hasn’t changed.”
“I got involved with a number of entrepreneurs in 1989 to launch this concept, which was around but not in a big way, called ‘hourly cost maintenance.’ We have been able to diversify and grow the company over the past 32 years to the point now where we have a portfolio consisting of just over 10 percent of the entire turbine-powered business aviation fleet.”
“SAF is jet-A, it is jet-A, it is jet-A. It’s made to the same ASTM as jet-A, but it’s made differently. It’s blended as opposed to refined, and it’s done with different things like vegetable oil and organic products like that. There is no performance degradation on the airplane, it doesn’t change the maintenance protocols on the airplane in any way, shape or form, and the weight is roughly the same.”
“I first heard about SAF at a conference in Van Nuys, California, three years ago when AvFuel brought out a truckload of SAF and put it in three different OEM airplanes and they flew the airplanes in front of everybody. I think that made us all a believer that this stuff does work, and I think I was lukewarm three years ago, but that certainly has changed and I would promote it today with anybody.”
