Originally Posted by
Cleavage
I guess "should" being the operative word.
If you were in the hover or at a low speed surely the remaining fuel in the tank would be aft, leaving the forward pump uncovered, and resulting in the F PUMP FWD being selected off. As the pitch goes down to increase speed, surely the fuel moving forward would now uncover the aft pump, resulting in the F PUMP AFT being selected off. If there was no drill for captions on both fuel pumps and neither of the individual drills tells you that one of those should be turned back on, isn't there a chance that they can both remain off with some fuel still in the main tank?? If its compounded by the reported fuel sensor problems, surely there's a chance of both fuel pumps being off and believing the fuel is in the supply tanks?
Thats why you need a rating for flying helicopters, where in the theorie part - which requires a test to pass - things like the fuel system are covered.
(Tanks, capacity, pumps, usage i.e.)
When someone gets captions about the fuelstate, pilots normaly get realy sensitive, checking the fuel state and how much fuel is in which tank, knowing, that there might be unusable fuel, depending on which pump isnīt working.
Knowing, that the engines take their fuel from the feeder tanks does mean, that they are the tanks I focus on.
If fuel isnīt transfering from the main tank, I do something about it or make decisions to asure a safe landing.
We wont get an answer, why this time the obvious wasnīt done or which assumptions led to continuing the flight, despite the warnings.
But I wonīt blame it on the general fueltank/pump setup, which is used in hundreds or even thousands of helicopters worldwide.
(Bo105, BK117 all variants, EC135, EC155) and except from an autorotation, where the crew covered the warning lights with duct tape, I donīt recal incidents which are related to the general setup.