The AAIB report says:

If the AAIB couldn't manage to determine the amount of fuel on board before the flight in a 5 month investigation, it would seem to be a reasonable defence that the pilot might have difficulty too.

If the AAIB couldn't manage to determine the amount of fuel on board before the flight in a 5 month investigation, it would seem to be a reasonable defence that the pilot might have difficulty too.

Reasonable that the pilot may not have been able determine the amount remaining, yes.

Reasonable as an excuse for running out, no.

If you know you burn 100L p/h and you're planning a 2 hour trip, then you should uplift 200L for the trip, plus 75L for the hold, plus enough to divert, plus 5-10%.

If you can't fit that much in the tanks, you know you're full :)

If you can, then worst case is there's a bit more left when you've finished flying the trip than there was before... (Ignoring W&B for a moment)

bookworm

If the AAIB couldn't manage to determine the amount of fuel on board before the flight in a 5 month investigation, it would seem to be a reasonable defence that the pilot might have difficulty too.

The PIC needs to satisfy himself before the flight there is enough fuel. This responsibility cannot be delegated.... or can it?

The real Q is whether it is enough for the PIC to rely on records made by others. If YES then it is no suprise at all he was acquitted. If NO....

It should be apparent to e.g. anyone running a manufacturing business in which certain procedures need to be followed to avoid delivering defective stuff to customers that the written log method, so widely used by flying schools, is wide open to gross errors. Why is it relied on?

I personally saw two cases where I would have gone down if I had relied on the logs.

Hasn't it just been demonstrated that from a legal point of view it is? Or am I still missing something. :confused:

It's obviously good airmanship to make sure that there is enough fuel for your flight. However, good airmanship doesn't seem to be a legal requirement :)

Well, we know that, which is why most quality systems don't rely on everything being recorded only once; when I'm looking for the historical background to a cock-up, which as a software engineer I find myself doing from time to time, it is helpful if the quality system has more than one audit trail - three is nice, then you normally have a reasonable chance of working out which record is wrong, and what actually happened, and who did it.

Here one might hope there would indeed be three records - the log of what people thought was in the plane, as referred to, and the fuel pump log as to what was put into which plane (this must exist because the fuel operator needs it for billing, and billing is important), plus a record of flying hours possibly verifiable by some sort of meter in the airfcraft (this must exist because the airfcraft operator nees it for billing, and billing is important). The log of how much fuel was in the plane at the start of each flight should be reconstructable from the other two records.

Sure, it's unreasonable to expect the pilot to demand to see and check the fuel operator's invoice book, so he wouldn't have access to all three sources. That doesn't explain why the CAA couldn't reconstruct it though.

Accountants won't accept 'logged' stock movements for year end accounts purposes . and quite rightly too. They insist on a physical stock count.

The idea of putting your life on the line by accepting a trail of additions and subtractions by a bunch of unknown people beggars belief.

The answer has been stated by many people on the current threads ( including me) fill it up, then you know where you stand.

Papework b*llocks
 

Just goes to show what a waste of time all these records that they insist you do in the UK are. I'm in the US at the moment, and I just take the plane to the pump and fill up....don't have to log it anywhere. I satisfy myself the aircraft if fuelled before I go. Obviously records are only kept to aportion blame in the event of an accident and in this case the records weren't sufficient for this case. Never mind,maybe the aircraft operator will get prosecuted instead for keeping insufficient records. At least someone will be prosecuted and it will keep many people on here happy (and some lawyer in business :D)

One good point about this thread is that it got me thinking and talking. I had a chat with a guy today who nearly had a double engine failure in a seneca (estimated 5 minutes of fuel remaining) due to crossfeed mismanagement, even though one tank was virtually full....scary isn't it? How would you react in a twin flying around at 1500' which suffed double EF?

EA

This has been an interesting thread from a variety of perspectives... couple of points:

bluskis:

Must remember to perform a finite element analysis on the airframe before my next trip... :)

On a more serious note:

Agreed.

WRT the acquital, it's obvious Tudor can't say more about this case. However, the prosecution decided to offer no further evidence after the former CPs evidence. It seems to me this can happen for a variety of reasons, including:

1. 'We still think He Did It, but after the evidence from the last witness there is no reasonable prospect of conviction... damn he's going to get off'

2. 'Oooops. The defence have proved there's no case to answer... we're lucky there's no such offence as Careless Prosecution'

I suspect scenario 1.

Whatever, I'm utterly certain of one thing: if I ever find myself in hot water with the CAA, I want the Flying Lawyer!

R1

I had a chat with a guy today who nearly had a double engine failure in a seneca (estimated 5 minutes of fuel remaining) due to crossfeed mismanagement, even though one tank was virtually full....scary isn't it?

Actually, a plane ended up doing a forced landing, not a million miles away from the subject of this thread, with one empty tank and one not very empty one... put this together with how often I've walked up to a (rented) PA28 and found virtually nothing in the tank (which itself is clear negligence on the previous pilot's part), people seem to do this quite a lot.

While I believe you could almost teach an ape to fly straight and level, most people out of an average population sample would not get through the PPL exams. Pilots aren't stupid, and most of them are pretty clever. This neurosurgeon has got to be highly intelligent... a 6 year degree+postgrad equivalent?

So, why does it happen? It's got to be the barmy training, and the people on the ground who allow it to happen. When I pointed out to a CFI (probably after my very first lesson) that the system of relying on multiple subtractions to work out the remaining fuel is highly prone to errors, he said it's maintained in two places (a tech log for the plane, and a flight log which has a line per flight) and "if the two agree, it's ok". The holes in this are too obvious to spell out...

It indeed appears that legally it is OK for the pilot to rely on these "records". I wonder what this will do for the CAA policy of prosecuting people who run out of fuel? I bet many/most of them did rely on the paper records to start with.

And all of them could moan about the system which teaches them to do fuel calculations with a ex-WW1 slide rule - a jury would roll over laughing if they heard about that. It's OK for those oldies among us who know how a slide rule works (adding/subtracting logs etc) but for later generations this is just another counter-intuitive way to get into a mess.

Ranger One

Not to divert the thread, and accepting the humour, but finite element calculations should not be relied on without physical testing of their validity, and I would hope aircraft manufacturers do this.

One afternoon, a long time ago, I took a passenger for a short flight in a school/club C152. The aircraft had been used all day for students, and I was assured it had been filled up after every one-hour lesson. Being short, I need a ladder to visually check the fuel tanks on high wing aircraft, and I was only going for about half an hour, so I believed it. The gauges were registering full - not that I took any notice of that anyway.

When we got back, the person who filled up said there was less than half an hour's worth of fuel remaining!!!!!!!!!!

Needless to say, I now get a ladder, every time.

Fuel crash trial THIS is what happened
 

I thought it was best to start a new thread so the true facts aren't lost in all the theories on the other thread.
The Press reports are wrong about why the case stopped.

I went to the court for the first day and got gripped. There were a few of us who went every day, including a retired BA Captain and a lawyer making notes.

The case stopped because the CAA prosecutor tried a dirty trick and it backfired big time.

Flying Lawyer wiped the floor with him and said the pilot couldn't have a fair trial now because of what the prosecutor did. The CAA lawyer came up with some rubbish but the judge wasn't having it and said Flying Lawyer could have time to advise the pilot and decide what they wanted to do.

The judge then turned to the CAA side and said if the trial stopped there could be a new trial with a different jury but he thought the CAA ought to "consider their position" about whether they should start again because of everything that had come out about the state of the Tech Log and because it was the CAA's fault the trial was ruined.

It was exciting with everyone waiting around wondering which way it would go. First we heard the CAA was going to go ahead with another trial if the defence stopped this one. Then we heard a Flying Lawyer was going to ask for the trial to stop and for the judge to make the CAA pay all the pilot's legal costs wasted defending this trial.

After the intermission, Flying Lawyer came back and said the trial should be stopped and the judge agreed. The CAA lawyer then said they'd decided not to go ahead with a new trial.

Flying Lawyer said he wasn't asking the judge to make the CAA pay the pilot's legal expenses. The judge looked surprised and so were we until Flying Lawyer said he'd done a deal with the CAA that if they dropped the case he wouldn't ask for them to pay the pilot's legal costs.
He asked for the pilot's costs to be reimbursed from some other fund so the pilot gets his legal costs back anyway.

I've never been inside a court before. It was fascinating and a real eye-opener about what happens if you're done by the CAA.

The CAA don't use independent experts, they use their own people. Their expert was very biassed and a lot of what he said was normal practice in GA was bollox. He was all cocky about visual checks and dipping tanks until he was cross-examined by Flying Lawyer. Then he just looked biassed and stupid.

We all started off on the CAA side but they were so unfair it was a disgrace. The CAA prosecutor was unfair all the time not just the dirty trick that backfired on him. He was trying to be all smarmy to the jury but it didn't take them long to see through him. They were giving each other looks and you could see they didn't like the way he was behaving. He was an A1 sh1t and got nailed by FL.

I started off thinking the pilot didn't have a hope in hell of getting off but after everything the defence brought out our vote in the gallery was the jury wouldn't have convicted him when the CAA didn't prosecute any of the other people in the chain who'd made mistakes. His mistake cost him 6 USG but the Tech Log was about 9 USG out even before that.

Maybe the pilot was lucky but the CAA behaved badly and deserved to lose. I've done a lot of GA flying over the years and things the CAA were saying were normal practice just weren't true.
We all thought it was a fair result.

I've started a new thread saying why the trial was stopped so the true facts aren't lost among the wild theories on this thread.
I was there every day and saw the whole thing happen.

Good post, Datcon. Thanks.

So what did the CAA claim was normal procedure?

Thanks for posting.

MJ

For other instances of odd prosecution tactics, there was a prosecution some time ago where an internal CAA memo advised against prosecution, but the CAA went ahead regardless.

Only when FL threatened to sub-poena the person who wrote the memo did the CAA yield. If memory serrves right they paid all costs as well.

If I remember rightly, the CAA is the only (or one of the few) prosecuting organisations which when it gets a conviction extracts the costs of mounting the prosecution in the first place . . .

So what was the dirty trick?

And what exactly was the CAA prosecutor saying that was so unfair?

So what was the dirty trick exactly?

Another slight diversion from the core topic of this thread, but in a part-answer to why aircraft fuel gauges are inaccurate compared to car gauges, it has something to do with the way the tanks are shaped. Most car tanks are quite "deep", so a small fuel usage results in a large drop in fuel level in the tank. Aircraft tanks, because they are often in the wing, are necessarily "flat" in design, so even a large difference in fuel quantity might be only a few millimetres of level difference. Measuring the level of a fluid sloshing around inside a tank accurately to a millimetre or so is quite complex, hence the gauges (built for cheapness) are often quite inaccurate.

It is interesting to compare the Cessna 172 fuel gauges with the Diamond Katana - the former has "wing tanks" while the latter has a "fuselage tank". I have never know the Katana gauge to be wrong by more than about 5 litres (and even that is a lot in a 76 litre tank) yet the Cessna can be out by 50 litres (out of 230 - the Cessna I'm used to has the long-range tank option).

Modern aircraft use more advance techniques to measure the fuel quantity (e.g. fuel flow, capacitance meters etc) and as a result the systems cost more. They do get reasonable accuracy even on wing-tanks (e.g. the Diamond Star which is accurate to +/-5 litres in 150 litres in my experience). But it does cost more. It is a major mod to fit a new type of sensor/gauge to an old aircraft as far as the CAA are concerned. It's not going to happen, guys and gals.

As to why some flying schools ask for aeroplanes to be returned near-empty when possible, well, there is this little detail of Maximum Takeoff Weight. You might be flying a four seater solo, but the next pilot might have three passengers and a lot of baggage. Full tanks may not be a legal option for them. Would you want to make an over-weight take-off? Even if the plane makes the take-off and crashes on landing at a safe weight, the insurance company is going to be rubbing it's hands with glee while the club wrings its hands in horror.

Now back to the regularly scheduled mud-slinging,

MD.

What sort of "rubbish" ?


So did I......... what saved the brain surgeon ?

If that aircraft came down on a school and killed a few innocents, would the brain surgeon still have escaped prosecution ?


May we be party to who they were, and what mistakes they made ?

Very interesting case !

TG