Fueling procedures and safety concerns
 

Gentlemen,


I am in charge of researching accidents/incidents involving aircraft (airliners) during fueling/refueling operations. Could someone give me any clues on that matter ?

Regards,

WL21

WL21,

don't recall any right now, but you may find something HERE or HERE using their search features.

happy landings
dolly

You might find this from UK HSE of interest. Don't know how good it is, just that it exists. Never been able to bring myself to read it from cover to cover!

winglet21,

There is one accident coming to my mind. I think it happened in 2001, the refuel coupling of a BA B777 had a bad casting and broke off during refueling at Denver. AFAIK fuel spilled on the still hot engine, and the fueler was badly burned (I think he died subsequently).
Boeing recommended to inspect the couplings asap (which we did), and we added a regular visual check of the couplings to the maintenance programme (all aircraft I have been involved in so far have such a check in one way or another).

On a more general point of view (no examples at hand!), we have been warned to fill up the tail tanks without paying attention to the aircraft balance - danger of tipping when the rest of the aircraft is almost empty... ;-)

Hope this helps,
J.V.

Winglet,

The only other fueling problems that I can recall seeing are:

Fuel shooting out the vents when the tanks didn't shut off.

Nozzle leak, or nozzle connection leak.

Hose rupture, caused when fueling at hight pressure (50psi) and shutoff valves closed suddenly. Hose had a bad spot that failed.


De-fueling problems: Truck over filled and fuel over flowed.

Mike

Didn't a BA 747 at Barbados have a fuel coupling part and a wing sprayed with fuel which then ignited? Early-mid 80s I think. They also had a guy there drive through the airport fence, stop by a just started engine, climb out of his truck and onto the back and jump in. No more descriptions!

Having re-fuelled commercial aircraft for the last 15 years,apart from venting tanks,I'm pleased to say I have had no incidents.Having said that,on one occasion at the airport I work at,we had an incident of the re-fuel coupling shearing which resulted in fueller and engineer running at 2 min mile pace!
There was also a case of the fueller driving off with the hose still connected! Fortunatly there was no major incident following this.
I have also seen a video of the ground connection being broken off by a baggage truck.The fuel must have shot 50' in the air!

Was at Gatwick a while back with the fueller hooked up. While he was refuelling a landrover (security? police? not sure exactly who it was) drove up, hovered around the back of the aeroplane and then drove straight over the pressurised fuel line. Didn't see it myself, but the fueller told me about it. Very glad the pipe didn't rupture.

Another overfuelling / spillage incident can be found here

Thank you gents,

The information provided will be very useful. As I could see there is much more research than one can find in ICAO Annexes and Manuals.

Regards,

WL21

There was a high winged (US?) military plane being refuelled and some fuel vent bungs (?) were not removed, and the subsequent pressure explosion broke the spar amongst other damage.

I am pretty sure the photo is on !!!!!!!!!!!!!! somewhere....others may have more accurate details.

found it!

http://www.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!/open.file?i...%3D&static=yes