AKL running out of Jet Fuel

[Slezy9]

Seems bizarre that they don't have a plan B. It could last 10-14 days! That's a lot of cancelled flights for Air NZ if the fuel is out that long. Emirates are operating their AKL - DUB via CHC, must be impacting available fuel already.

Do airlines have insurance policies for this sort of thing?

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11923227

[troppo]

Business interruption cover...if they have it

[skol]

Perhaps if they'd been using Whenuapai for domestic and regional flights it wouldn't be such a disaster.

[framer]

Doesn't Whenuapai get it's jet A from the same pipeline?

[skol]

Not as far as I know, but there would be storage tanks at Whenuapai. And not the same demand for long haul.

[Octane]

Why the hell do they need to fly in "experts" from Canada? It's a breached pipeline, not rocket science...

[HHornet]

Hum, where does the farmer stand in all of this after letting his digger damage the pipeline (as reported by Radio NZ today) ? They also mentioned that the leak had disgorged the equivalent of two fuel tankers' worth. That's going to make a mess of the farmer's field.

[FlightlessParrot]

Seems bizarre that they don't have a plan B. It could last 10-14 days!

Standard Auckland infrastructure problem, I'm afraid. This is the city that 20 years ago had an electricity outage in the CBD that lasted for five weeks.

To some extent it's because Auckland has grown very fast indeed, and the infrastructure in all sorts of areas hasn't kept up. Mostly, I fear, because local politicians don't want to raise rates, and national politicians and bureaucrats aren't in Auckland, and many hate the place; but the pace of development would have needed to be pretty brisk.

It's also true that NZ is a long, thin, country, that makes the routing of genuinely redundant services a bit difficult.

[ElZilcho]

Standard Auckland infrastructure problem, I'm afraid. This is the city that 20 years ago had an electricity outage in the CBD that lasted for five weeks.

To some extent it's because Auckland has grown very fast indeed, and the infrastructure in all sorts of areas hasn't kept up. Mostly, I fear, because local politicians don't want to raise rates, and national politicians and bureaucrats aren't in Auckland, and many hate the place; but the pace of development would have needed to be pretty brisk.

It's also true that NZ is a long, thin, country, that makes the routing of genuinely redundant services a bit difficult.

Hrmmm, they've had no issue in increasing my rates (in Auckland). They've nearly doubled over the past 5 years. :}

[cyclenorm]

Damage to a fuel pipeline in New Zealand has lead to flight changes in and out of New Zealand.

[URL="https://www.stuff.co.nz/.../a-cut-pipeline-is-causing-a-jet-fuel-shortage-at- auckland-airport-heres-what-we-know-so-far"[/URL]

Many flights out of AKL are very long range, and will now require fuel stops at other airports, in or out of NZ. What effect will this have on crew schedules, etc?

[cyclenorm]

Intermediate fuel stops will extend flight times for already long non-stops to Doha, Singapore, KL, Bangkok, Houston, Buenas Aires, etc. How will this affect crew times and deployments?

[TBM-Legend]

Have they heard of tankers to feed the airport fuel farm until repairs completed?

[FlightlessParrot]

Have they heard of tankers to feed the airport fuel farm until repairs completed?

It seems there aren't enough road tankers in the country. When duplication or an enlarged local storage was last rejected, the idea was to import tankers from Australia to cover the requirement (!). Government warned of fuel risk five years ago | Radio New Zealand News (http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/339611/government-warned-of-fuel-risk-five-years-ago)

[Ken Borough]

Air NZ must be wishing they still had at least one747. An empty 747 fuelled to MLW can import an awful lot of fuel but they must also have the know-how and equipment to transfer the fuel to other aircraft.

[bluesideoops]

Must be a terrible design if so easily interrupted and absolute madness that an entire airport would rely entirely on only one pipeline (never heard of redundancy and contingency planning?)

[Chris2303]

Must be a terrible design if so easily interrupted and absolute madness that an entire airport would rely entirely on only one pipeline (never heard of redundancy and contingency planning?)

Much the same design that has Sydney with a single cross runway to cope with strong westerlies.

I agree, however.

[PoppaJo]

Emirates Auckland-Dubai is stopping in Melbourne for nearly 2hrs enroute to refuel and change crews, and that's for the rest of the week also.

Looks like Qatar is going all the way currently abeam PHE.

[FlightlessParrot]

Must be a terrible design if so easily interrupted and absolute madness that an entire airport would rely entirely on only one pipeline (never heard of redundancy and contingency planning?)

They've heard of it, but rejected it after a cost-benefit analysis. It shows the weakness of pure MBA style management, but not naivety. BTW, I see that Melbourne is also having a fuel shortage. In some situations, single points of failure are quite expensive to avoid.

[Heathrow Harry]

Parrott is correct - lots of airports worldwide are in the same boat TBH

Two pipelines is twice the cost and four times the legal challenges and aggravation - then you have to leave one empty or spend time balancing flow between the two...

One issue is just how deep it was buried and how it was marked.... clealry a fault in both.

But the farmer had probably forgotten about it and the contractor didn't look

As for repairing large diameter oil pipelines I'd rather trust a Canadian expert who does it day in, day out than some local plumber

[RubberDogPoop]

It seems there aren't enough road tankers in the country.
[QUOTE=Have they heard of tankers to feed the airport fuel farm until repairs completed? [/QUOTE]

Jet fuel is not transported by road....

[Enos]

Jet fuel is not transported by road....

Maybe not in NZ but in many other countries it is.

[kaikohe76]

If previous Governments here in New Zealand, had taken the trouble to ensure we had a full operational rail service here in the Northland, fuel could be sent by rail tankers from the Marsden Point site to Auckland Airport & elsewhere. Case of the NZ National party, totally unaware, that life does exist to the North of Auckland!

[Vertisol]

A tricky welding job no doubt.


Like checking the fuel level with a lit match..

[skol]

That pipeline doesn't just doesn't carry Jet A1, it carries diesel and petrol as well, the entire city of Auckland is at risk of running dry in the next week. Some gas stations are already out of 95.
And when the Jet A1 finally reaches AKL it has to settle for 30 hours. Airfields in the Pacific are running low now according to the news.

[xny556]

Plenty of Jet A1 is delivered all around New Zealand in road tankers....

[troppo]

A couple of NZ 777s into nadi late tonight which is abnormal

[Infieldg]

The guy in charge of the pipeline said the biggest problem with a redundant pipeline (eg. from Tauranga for true reduncancy) is our Resource Management Act (RMA) blocking it.

It's an unfortunate side effect of trying to convince the world we're clean and green (despite only recently requiring any form of emissions controls on cars!) that any infrastructure improvements are challenged.

For example hydro electric dam proposals are rejected resulting in 20% of our electricity being generated by burning gas and coal meaning every additional electric car we plug in is 100% powered by fossil fuels, and 29 losing their lives in the ridiculously dangerous uphill entry Pike River mine explosion cos we weren't allowed to open cast it no matter how perfectly we restored the environment afterwards.

Incredibly, the response from the Green party was, as best I can remember it from watching it on TV yesterday morning, that the leak indicates that the Resource Management Act needs TIGHTENING.

There has to be a teeny bit of wriggle room for the really important stuff.

[MelbourneFlyer]

QF is flying a B747 SYD-AKL tonight, loaded with 50,000kg of fuel but no passengers, which will be used to keep the JetConnect and Jetstar fleet running.

[MelbourneFlyer]

Other moves by QF to handle the fuel shortage:
* A few trans-Tasman B737 flights are being cancelled and replaced by a single A330 flight
* QF will do aircraft-to-aircraft fuel transfers, for example milking fuel from an A330 into a B737!

[belowMDA]

For you Aussies wondering about tankers driving the fuel in, the road between the refinery and Auckland had a few significant hills (New Zealand version of hills, not yours) with at times just a single lane each way with many tight turns. It's absolutely not suitable for fully laden tankers. The feasible solution, which is increased storage capacity at the tank farm was not persued by the fuel companies or airport company by the sounds of it.

[TBM-Legend]

As the saying goes you reap what you sow...

[Zhuntr]

Im sorry, but this post is so wrong I had to register an account for the 1st time so I could refute it:

The guy in charge of the pipeline said the biggest problem with a redundant pipeline (eg. from Tauranga for true reduncancy) is our Resource Management Act (RMA) blocking it.
You mean the Refining NZ spokesperson? As a rep for heavy industry, they are often not in favour of legislation that favours environmental protection over industrial development, but in this case it is not the RMA that would block a second pipeline, but rather the people who who use it to prevent something they personally do not approve of.
Refining NZ for example have strong lobby groups trying to loosen RMA restrictions currently.


For example hydro electric dam proposals are rejected resulting in 20% of our electricity being generated by burning gas and coal meaning every additional electric car we plug in is 100% powered by fossil fuels
I'm sorry but that is factually incorrect. both the 20% & 100% numbers you have quoted are absolutely incorrect - approximately 20% of our generation capacity IS indeed fossil fuel-sourced, but these plants typically only operate during peak periods, and the remainder of the time are offline or in stand-by modes. During typical spring weather for example, when we often have wind & sunny conditions, more than 99% of the grid load is generated by renewable sources currently.

As for the electric cars - no matter what the sticker on the charging station, they pull power from the national grid, meaning they have the same share on renewable/ non-renewable power sources as your toaster & my tv.


Incredibly, the response from the Green party was, as best I can remember it from watching it on TV yesterday morning, that the leak indicates that the Resource Management Act needs TIGHTENING.

There has to be a teeny bit of wriggle room for the really important stuff.
Well I'll agree with you on that point; the Greens can be more than a little hysterical at times...

[Mail-man]

Pleased to see NOTAMS from both AKL and NAN regarding abnormal fuel situations. Just another example of Australians dropping the ball (in my experience) failing to list fuel issues in notams

[skol]

QF tankering fuel to AKL and then defueled according to the news. Must be a pretty desperate situation.

[esa-aardvark]

Anyone know what the plan was for a pipeline fault ?
(I know, "what's it cost & who pays ?")

[Chris2303]

Anyone know what the plan was for a pipeline fault ?
(I know, "what's it cost & who pays ?")

No plan existed.

A risk analysis was done but the risk was deemed to be exceedingly low.

Auckland Airport may want to consider increasing the amount of onsite storage they have

[TBM-Legend]

who pays for this schamozzle?

[Oakape]

The news in NZ this morning they said that it is expected to have 50% flow rate by sometime next week & that the pipeline will not be fully repaired for up to 12 months

[Old Fella]

QF is flying a B747 SYD-AKL tonight, loaded with 50,000kg of fuel but no passengers, which will be used to keep the JetConnect and Jetstar fleet running.

Why only 50,000 Kgs? I guess you mean they are tankering 50,000 Kgs. The B744 can carry over three times that amount.

[Ken Borough]

Old Fella,

I guess they had to put the stuff somewhere. A few light twins in AKL is a lot different to a clutch of wide-bodies at the Jet Base.

[TurningFinalRWY36]

Plus i assume there is a landing weight limitation. What is the MLW for a 74 and how much fuel will that be assuming no cargo

[blow.n.gasket]

If I remember correctly, the MLW depends on wether it's a RR, GE or ER 747.
Tonnes.
The Rolls Royce MLW is 295.7
The General Electrics are 285.7
and the Extended Range ER's are 288.9

Average(ish) empty weights are circa
RR 181.0
GE 181.0
ER 184.0

Plus crew + pantry loads of around 5.0 tonnes

So the maximum fuel tankering option would be in a RR.

[layman]

Just had a booking change and was told both a 747 and A330 had been used to tanker fuel

If I heard correctly, partial use of the pipeline will be available by early next week

regards
layman

[mrdeux]

A 747 empty weight is around 190 tonnes. Max landing weight about 285 tonnes (I know it varies). So you could land about 95 tonnes. Keep 30 to fly the aircraft out...which leaves an offload of roughly 65 tonnes.