Register
Aircraft Stepups Maintenance

Nitrogen Tires Unnecessary for Small Aircraft

Nitrogen-filled tires hold a lot of respect in the automotive world, but exactly how do they benefit aircraft tires? When talking about small aircraft tubed tires, the advantages just aren't so huge. For large jets and tubeless tires, the nitrogen creates less wheel corrosion and pressure loss. But for your petite 2-seater, it really doesn't seem to make a difference.

Paul Bertorelli
Verified

The ultimate dream of marketing departments is to somehow extract profits from thin air and this very thing may have been achieved, literally, with the nitrogen-filled tire. Car dealers now offer this special service as an “upgrade” for prices of up to $100 or more and we recently heard from an aircraft owner asking about this for his Cessna.

Does it make any sense to bother with finding a shop that can fill your tires with exotic nitrogen or can you muddle along on the rather prosaic compressed air, straight from the shop supply hose? No surprise we’re gonna go with the latter answer, but that’s not to suggest that nitrogen-filled tires are entirely without merit. They just make little or no sense for small aircraft tubed tires.

Paul Bertorelli

Paul Bertorelli is Aviation Consumer’s Editor at Large. In addition to his valued contributions to Aviation Consumer, his in-depth video productions on sister publication AVweb cover a wide variety of topics that greatly contribute to safety, operation and aircraft ownership. When Paul isn’t writing or filming, he’s out flying his J3 Cub.