Diesel technology has always been interesting to air charter stalwarts. It eliminates the isolation we feel as lowly 100LL consumers when we taxi into Signature at HPN and they say "get lost please, we can't make money off you.. no more room on our ramp." (True story, has happened, .. yes.. to me in a very snappy looking Cessna 310R too!)

The reality is that if you don't swallow lots of Jet-A you are not of much interest to a lot of FBO's. But at least being able to drink it opens up a lot more airfields to you. This comes in handy, if you really go off the deep end and take your air charter ship around the world on a circumnavigation joy ride flight. If you do get carried away into such an endeavor, and you do it with diesel, you will be able to tank up at a lot of places.

This article from AvWeb highlights the application of a new diesel dual combustion design that is being used in non-diesels as well. The simplicity and elegance of this design is that each cylinder has a mission specific function. Namely one cylinder combusts, while another compresses which allows the engineers / designers to taylor the design of each cylinder to be more appropriate for its role. The technology is purported to lead to greater efficiency and also allows for any fuel type, not just diesel - or home heating oil!