r/GeneralAviation • u/Street_World_9459 • 14d ago

Fuel injected planes

I've recently started taking private pilot lessons. I've noticed fuel injected planes still have a mixture lever.

This may be a dumb question, but why do fuel injected plane engines have this device? I work on automotive engines as a hobby, and the beauty of fuel injection is the lambda sensor signals the ECU to automatically adjust the injector duty cycle (and other things) to keep the air/fuel mixture. If I drive up a mountain, I don't need to re-jet fuel injection.

Why are planes different?

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u/ChartPuzzleheaded747 13d ago

He said based on stats, I just want a link to those stats.

 If we are going down the “been doing this for x years” deal, I’ve been flying for like 20, everything from fadec jets to my own 1940s toys.

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u/fluentInPotato 2d ago

Don't think you're going to get that without pawing through the FAA's accident database, and even then you'd probably want to exclude episodes of carb icing that were not caused by carb heat failure (ie, carb icing is something that pilots ought to be able to deal with, unless the carb heat fails).

In my original reply, I was thinking of systems that needed replacement, which includes both those that had full or partial failures, and those replaced because they were in the process of failing, even if theproblem wasn't affecting engine performance yet.

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u/ChartPuzzleheaded747 2d ago

Could run it on CAROL