Fuel Spills - Ramp Operations
 

Hello;

When a fuel spill occurs during refueling operation, and the aircraft APU is on and the spill is located underneath the aircraft, do you, by procedure, shut off the APU or do you leave it running? Thank you.

You touch nothing is the simple answer.

The refueller will stop pumping the go-go juice, and inform the dispatcher, and airport fire services, so they can clean it up. After, your company will be billed (in the EU) for the clean up.

An ASR should also be written up as well.

At my current outfit:
Notify RFS
Boarding stopped and passengers disembarked if they are already on.
Inform ground staff to turn off all engines from vehicles/loaders etc that are in the area
APU stays running
( It sounds like my outfit doesn't trust the refuellers/ground staff as much as 900er's mob does)

Framer
 

Your outfit does go a bit over the top i must admit. We wouldnt disembark unless we think it would be a hazard to crew and/or pax.

Yeah I think the thinking is that it is such a rare occurrence that they will just play it safe. I'm fairly confident that my current airline hasn't had a fuel spill near the aircraft in the four or five years that I've been involved with the safety committee. That being the case the cost of an hour or so delay on one flight every 5-10 years is reasonable to offset the tiny chance of a major fire with pax on board.

When this happened to me, the APU wasn't the biggest issue. Accepting you have to notify the airport authorities who will in turn call the fire brigade, you'll quickly find out that this biggest issue is your passengers sitting over a pool of fuel. In my case, the pool size was five to 10 litres but the fire brigade wanted the passengers off. They didn't care if the APU was running or not but after everybody is off, why would you need it? Also, if the fuel spill was the result of an aircraft fault you'll find you are going nowhere soon. Also, the clean-up crew will do a better job without the unnecessary stressor of APU noise.

I found a lot of the fuellers heavily rely on the automatic shut off valves to stop refuelling. In my case the valve did not close, and sprayed out on the apron from the opposite wing :ok:

fuel spil
 

happened to me once in Norway (hawker 800)
i think the spil was maximum 2-3 liters.
the followme car took 2 pictures of the spil and told us goodbye...

This is standard procedure for all aircraft I have worked with over the last few decades. Early experiences that were unique and common were with the 74C, with the VTO system it was common to shut off prior to target, we would drop the sticks and pull a fuse out of the controller to disable it fueling to the sticks, eventually someone would forget to replace the fuse... Big MESS!

Operating these 74C freighters out of a airport in a hot environment it was also common to fuel the wings to max capacity at nite with expectations of an early morning departure. I can not count the times a slow operation pushed the departure, as things heated up volumetric expansion would either force the vent boxes to dump on the gate or more commonly spill during pushback. It was quite common.

My operation's SOP is to give the fueler the exact figures you want in each tank, with an overall total. I Believe its a good idea, and will stop the idea of relying on the shut off valves to close. As the above poster mentioned, its a nightmare in hot environments.