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I feel that synthetic kerosene via electrolysis is a far more viable path to sustainable aviation than battery-electric engines. The energy-inefficiency doesn’t really matter as long as you can keep the total cost of the flight within consumer reach.

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Carbon neutral synthetic fuels might make sense for airliners, because they're already pretty efficient, reliable and incomprehensibly powerful and there's tons of other stuff in them that'd require maintenance even if you took out the engines.

They don't make sense for general aviation planes that are usually a fifty year-old engine design that requires expensive overhauls and guzzles expensive fuel wrapped in a bit of aluminum.

Compated to jet fuel, avgas is more expensive today because there's almost no market for it. When synthesized, it's probably cheaper to produce than jet fuel.

But do we really need to focus on general aviation? I don't have numbers but believe it to be a pretty small part overall. In transportation, it's also fine if we keep some gasoline speciality vehicles for a long time, as long as we're able to convert the vast majority of cars and trucks.

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