Art:
NPAS is flying further and longer with less aircraft.
Fuel or lack of it particularly at night (airfields shut and MLA is higher) is at the forefront of pilots minds.
In Essex we often would be tasked until we really had to land on minimums.
Operational environments like the above are where we often looked (outside the cockpit) when investigating accidents back when I was in the Navy.
Depending upon how extensive such an operational pattern is, and what lengths crews are being pushed, this habit pattern may support the argument that "supervisory error" contributed this accident. (Not sure what the Brit term is for "supervisory error" in the formal sense, in terms of a policy or environment that sets crews/pilots up).
Was this an accident waiting to happen? Maybe, maybe not.
It would be interesting to find out if the AAIB is able to sort out the number of NPAS missions (from all providers, not just the company supporting this particular area) that habitualy get to or slip over the SOP limits. From one of the previous posts, it appears that any mission that lands below the SOP minimum fuel level must be reported.
I admit to making some inferences here that folks actually flying in NPAS will find "not quite right," and will apologize in advance. A bit of thinking out loud.
EDIT to comment on a comment
skyrange
Originally Posted by you
Originally Posted by me
"don't run out of gas"
This is not a fuel problem!
May be a
fuel management problem (which is all about
don't run out of gas), or it may be a "knobology" problem which occurred while doing fuel management as things got close to min fuel near the end of a mission.
There could have been 90, 100 or even 150kg in the main tank. Still the same problem. It was simply in the wrong place. The pilot either
thought there was fuel in the supply tank when there wasn't or knew that there wasn't but couldn't do anything about it.
Or, perhaps thought he did something about it, but didn't realize that he'd hit the Prime switch rather than the transfer switch, for reasons possibly not knowable to any of us.
TC made an interesting point about always flying with XFR pumps on when he flew this model. A given operator/company may have rules for not doing that with an eye toward extending the life of its equipment.