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Fuel awareness requires you to use several independent means to judge fuel state. When possible be present for the refueling to verify the amount added.
while the other selector was in the “ON” position, be- fore returning both fuel selectors to the “ON” position before takeoff. According to a checklist found in the airplane, the fuel selectors were to be set to “X-FEED” during taxi and then to “ON” during engine run-up. GPS data recovered from onboard devices indicated that the pilot taxied from the ramp and onto the active runway without stopping in about three minutes, indi- cating that it is unlikely he performed a complete run- up of both engines before takeoff. He likely failed to return the left engine fuel selector from the “X-FEED” to the “ON” position, where it remained throughout the flight and resulted in fuel starvation and a loss of en- gine power on both engines.
Focus on Fuel
The NTSB continues to identify fuel mismanagement as a common factor in airplane accidents. Lest pilots of twin and turbine airplanes feel complacent, in its recent Safety Alert 67: Flying on Empty (August 2017), the NTSB notes:
• Almosthalfofpilotsinvolvedinfuelmanagementaccidents hold either a Commercial or Air Transport Pilot certificate (48 percent);
• Pilots holding Private or Sport Pilot certificates make up 50 percent of those who have had fuel mismanagement events;
• Only2percentoffuel-relatedmishapsinvolvedstudentpilots.
Fuel exhaustion (running completely out of fuel) and fuel starvation (having fuel onboard that doesn’t reach the engine because of improperly set selectors, a blockage or water con- tamination) were implicated in an average of more than 50 ac- cidents per year since 2010, according the NTSB. Fuel exhaus- tion accounted for a little more than half (56 percent), while fuel starvation resulted in 35 percent of the crashes.
“An overwhelming majority of investigations of fuel man- agement accidents – 95 percent – cited personnel issues (such as use of equipment, planning, or experience in the type of aircraft being flown) as causal or contributing to fuel exhaus- tion or starvation accidents, Prudent pilot action can eliminate these issues. Less than 5 percent of investigations cited a fail- ure or malfunction of the fuel system.”
Fuel Awareness
Most multi-engine airplanes are low-wing types with a fair amount of dihedral. Because of the dihedral “slope” of the wing, fuel filler ports are at the outboard, high-end of fuel tanks. Consequently, in many airplane types there may be no fuel
visible at all through the filler ports when there is still signifi- cant fuel remaining in the tank. In other words, determining the amount of fuel on board must include ways to accurately detect and track less-than-full fuel levels that are independent of visual inspection.
Fuel awareness requires you use several independent means to judge fuel state. Pilots make totalizer data entry er- rors. Ground handlers make fueling errors or sometimes forget to add fuel altogether. Fuel burn may vary from flight to flight. And aircraft fuel gauges are sometimes inaccurate. Where fuel is concerned, you need to be uncompromising and skeptical.
There are many independent ways to check and track fuel state:
• Avisualcheckoffuellevelinthetanks;
• Theindicationsoncockpitfuelgauges;
• Wing-mounted fuel sight gauges, when installed;
• The “fuel remaining” amount on a fuel totalizer;
• The amount of fuel you personally put into the tanks, or watch being added prior to the flight;
• Fuel records, compared to the engine tach time or airplane Hobbs time when the fuel was last added.
Fuel totalizers are among the best safety devices on an air- craft. But their information is only as good as the accuracy of the pilot’s inputs. If you’ve ever delayed or forgotten to input fuel load, or have entered “approximate” data, all those little errors can eventually add up. It’s best to routinely top the tanks and reset the totalizer at “full” to avoid creeping inaccuracies in the fuel-remaining data.
Not all methods work for all airplane types or all fuel lev- els. The trick is to look for discrepancies between one or more available method and the others. If any one indication differs noticeably from the others, the only means to resolve the dis- crepancy is to add fuel until it is at a level known to be suf- ficient to complete the flight with reserves. This fuel status technique is especially helpful if the flight requires a less-than- full fuel load for weight and balance purposes or for improved performance.
This is even more critical when more than one pilot flies the airplane. For several years I flew and managed two Beech Barons for a company in Tennessee. I generally flew one, and the company CEO flew the other. At times, however, we would swap, sometimes with little notice. We adopted a policy to check the fuel level using every possible way from the list above. If any one indication differed noticeably from the others, we would suspect them all, and add enough fuel to either:
1. be able to visually confirm the fuel level in the tanks, or;
2. complete the planned flight with the fuel we put in the air- plane at that time (most of our trips were short, about an hour plus reserves).
With that operating philosophy, we never departed with con-
cern about the amount of fuel on board.
14 • TWIN & TURBINE
March 2018