More on Fuel Management - and an Ethical Dilemma

On 7/15/2005 04:22, Greg Farris wrote:

In the June AOPA Pilot "State of General Aviation" issue, Bruce
Landsberg gives a gold star to Cessna, for their new production singles,
which, according to the article, have not suffered a single fuel
mismanagement accident. Well, I know of one near-miss, which could have
broken that record, and presents an ethical dilemma as well.

It involves a flying club and an ATP rated pilot - in fact, a 767
Captain for a major. He took out a new C-182S on a personal trip, and
returned "uneventfully" under IFR, in IMC at night, with two passengers.
When the plane was refueled in the morning, it took 90GAL of 100LL -
useable fuel for that model is 88GAL, with total 92GAL. It is quite
possible that a missed approach that night would have resulted in three
fatalities.

When confronted discreetly about it, the pilot was nonchalant. He has
a career ahead of him, and a family, with two young children. Because of
his poor judgment, and even more because of his flippant attitude, some
people who know about this want to make a full-blown incident out of it.
Others feel it would damage or destroy his career - and we "hope" he has
learned his lesson.


I don't know whether you should take any official action, but in my
opinion, if the pilot is not all together clear about the seriousness
of the incident, then anyone that flies with him will be taking a
potentially unacceptable risk.

In that case, it doesn't seem like it would be much of a flying career...

As far as I understand it, the FARs don't say you need to land with
your fuel reserve. I certainly would never want to cut my fuel that
close ... and I sure would not want to fly in a plane with a pilot
that did so.


--
Mark Hansen, PP-ASEL, Instrument Student
Sacramento, CA