In the absence of reliable fuel gauges, a totaliser would seem to be the best solution. So long as it also has a non resettable scale.
How do you establish the actual fuel quantity if the ac hasn't been refuelled to max for 14 days and the gauges aren't reliable?
If a charter company told someone to return the ac without a high fuel load remaining, the only options would be to say either:
a. "How much is there in it right now? Sign here please."
or
b. "I'll be using it for x hours at y gall per hour, so I'm going to add xy gallons to whatever is in it at the moment if you can't tell me the accurate figure. So you'll be getting it back with the same fuel as it's got right now!"
The xy calculation needs to be carefully checked though. But I agree that the variety of units in current use (US gallons, Imperial gallons, litres, pounds and kilograms) doesn't help. Nor does the fact that many people taking PPL exams don't understand the difference between density and specific gravity, particularly the decimal generation. I would like to see the use of specific gravity banned - the only units used should be mass, volume and density (= mass/volume). Comparing a bucket of fuel to the weight of the same bucket filled with water is an anachronism!
But then there are some total idiots around. An ac was filled with fuel for 5 hours. It flew for an hour, then another pilot went away on a trip of 2 hours, landed and came back later. Sure enough, after exactly 5 hours it all went quiet and he had to put it into a field, fortunately without damage. He could have refuelled before departure, at destination or at any one of about 8 different aerodromes on the way back..... But he thought that he knew better "These gauges must be wrong, we had x gallons and I've flown for y hours at z gallons per hour, so we must have (x-yz) left..." Well - only if x and z were accurately known - and he'd included all the taxying time in his estimate of y.........
NB - This is not to be taken as representing any comment on the current case referred to in this thread.
Last edited by BEagle; 4th Sep 2003 at 14:02.