Originally Posted by
Hot 'n' High
Even happier when the safety of all on board was confirmed. Nearly 40 years ago - how time flies - without the need of fuel!
They were very lucky.
Notably, in the 1990s I met from time to time a business executive (non-aviation). Discussion over coffee one time led to his background - that he had been in 1980 one of the administration staff at Alidair East Midlands HQ. Within a few sentences we were at the Exeter accident, whereupon, after his surprise that I had knowledge of the detail, he described what had taken place back in the office afterwards, when all the prior fuel deliveries to the aircraft, the consumption logs, engine hours, everything, was got out and recalculated. Now the key issue was running out of fuel when the gauges were known u/s and the tanks had not been dipped to check. But the calculations they did led them to believe that, though they had the detailed tickets for fuel delivery that the crew had with them, the fuel delivered on one of the two occasions in Santander was distinctly light compared to what the signed ticket showed.
Having told me what I already understood, about the captain's ultimate responsibility, etc, he then described that the final fuel delivery, though they had the captain's ticket for it, was never billed through by the agent in Spain.
It was an ad-hoc charter. The Plymouth-Santander ferry had broken down in port in Spain. Alidair got the rush job for relief flights, positioned East Midlands to Santander, ran the first flight to Exeter with pax to be coached on to Plymouth, then ferried back to Spain and ran the second load to Exeter, the accident flight.