Wrong Fuel with disastrous consequences

loftus

Super Member
Joined
Mar 17, 2013
Messages
1,340
Location
Ponce Inlet, Florida
Aircraft
Aircam; Previously owned Autogyro MTO
Total Flight Time
800 hours
I have to be especially careful with my helicopter (and prefer to use self-serve so I know exactly what's going into the tanks) because some line crew see nothing but turbine helicopters all day long and may never have seen a piston Bell 47 before. Stopping in Wyoming in June the refueler drove the wrong truck out to meet me and was seriously surprised when I insisted on 100 LL.

Yet another reason to sample the fuel for color and smell . . .
 
I don’t believe the pilot/owner would have said yes to Jet fuel as claimed by the person who filled it with the wrong fuel. Just doesn’t make sense and only a person who doesn’t know this would claim it...
 
I don’t believe the pilot/owner would have said yes to Jet fuel as claimed by the person who filled it with the wrong fuel. Just doesn’t make sense and only a person who doesn’t know this would claim it...
Agreed; but an argument for always refueling your own aircraft - even when service is provided.
 
Don't most aircraft have a placard to SAY what type of fuel is required right at the filling inlet? Mine sure does, even though it's just an E-AB.
 
Don't most aircraft have a placard to SAY what type of fuel is required right at the filling inlet? Mine sure does, even though it's just an E-AB.
Yes it is a requirement, but does not prevent mistakes. I have been in a situation once where a fuel truck operator almost put Jet-A in my fiend's Pitts before we went for a flight. In the case of this accident, it is extremely unlikely that the pilot told the attendant to put Jet-A in his Piper. The pilot was a very high time experienced pilot. He seems to have made the mistake of letting the attendant refuel his plane without visually checking what the attendant was doing.
 
It can happen to even the best of us.
When a Piper dealer at Brown Field we put on an air show each year.
Bob Hoover was a regular flying a brand new twin-engine factory own Commander.
At the end of his act, he would cut power and land doing an engine-out landing with a loop just above the runway.
We shared the fuel sales with the Cessna Dealer on the field with the only rule the first one to serve them gets the sale.
The fuel truck driver watched and he heard no sound from the engine and he assumed it was a turbine and rush over and filled the tanks with Jet fuel.

Bob did not stop to get a latter and look in the high wing tanks or get a fuel sample from the gascolator to see that the color of the fuel has changed and know he had the incorrect fuel.

He took off and only made it to about 500 feet at the end of the runway and it was backfiring with smoke.
He made a masterful landing on the side of a bank of dry mud hills 25 feet tall and covering the area.
Wheels up he only damaged the floor.

We help him pull it out with a helicopter and they repaired it in our nose dock/ramp.
 
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