Saw this article

Plane runs out of fuel in Elizebeth City, NC

A student pilot and an instructor. The plane ran out of fuel and the instructor had to land it in a field. How does someone quailifed to be an instructor run out of fuel?

I'm not a pilot, obviously, but, instrument error is one cause.

In no particular order:

1) Instructor/pilot error
2) Mechanical error
3) Gremlin activity

Ran out of gas money.

quote:

Originally posted by Loswsmith:
In no particular order:

1) Instructor/pilot error
2) Mechanical error
3) Gremlin activity

But did the F-up originate before take-off during fueling or during the flight. I can't imagine an instructor not calculating fuel for the flight plan correctly, or at least double checking the student.

quote:

Originally posted by KDR:
...I can't imagine an instructor not calculating fuel for the flight plan correctly...

You're underestimating the power of human stupidity or arrogance, because it has happened.

If I recall correctly, fuel gauges on private aircraft only need to be accurate when indicating empty.

My father has a Piper Archer II. It has a tank in each wing. Part of the pre-flight procedure is to open the fuel fill caps on each wing and assure the tanks are full. We also keep a timer in the aircraft and run a certain period of time on one tank, and then switch for an equal period of time to keep fuel balanced.

I've heard stories of pilots 'thinking' they filled it up, or were told it was full and took off without checking. There also could have been a mechanical failure that caused the fuel to leak out, but likely not both tanks together unless there was an issue in the full system itself.

My question is.... did the aircraft run out of fuel, or did the engine run out of fuel? Big difference.

Hey, give a guy a break! I'm an instructor (firearms), and I run out of ammo at the range all the time. Where does that stuff go?

quote:

Originally posted by Rightwire:
If I recall correctly, fuel gauges on private aircraft only need to be accurate when indicating empty.

You recall correctly.

I don't know how civilian flight instruction is conducted these days, but military flight instruction includes a specific set of training tasks for each training flight. These tasks are all related to the particular phase of instruction, and most tasks (if not all) are required to be accomplished or the student will not be allowed to progress to the next training flight.

Sometimes things happen where delays occur and the tasks are not getting accomplished at the usual pace, but as an IP you don't want to incomplete the flight which causes delays in the student's training track. So you might do one last task (instrument approach for example) to complete the flight with the trade-off of landing with a lower fuel state than normal.

That said, it is always up to the IP to not run out of fuel! I fully understand how it's easy to get busy providing instruction, especially if a student is having difficulties with the tasks for that flight. But "C'mon, man!" During a simple training flight, an off-airport landing with the fuel tanks filled with air is inexcusable.

Many years ago I was taking lessons myself at PDK in Atlanta, taxiing to the active runway with my instructor.

We looked ahead and there was a plane coming straight towards us at speed. About a hundred yards away it lifted off and went over us.

My instructor told me later that that plane also had a student and instructor from a rural airport somewhere that clearly wasn't up to speed on correct operations at our much larger airport with several runways and didn't realize they were on the wrong one.

quote:

How does an instructor run out of fuel?

By continuing to run the engine without regular refueling.

As others said, check the tanks visually before flight. Every time, all tanks.

Check the cutoff valve(s) position(s), too.

Then, when the engine coughs, sputters and stops, you'll know a fiery end awaits!

That story is too thin on information to make any conclusions specific to that flight.

1) At higher altitudes the mixture needs to be leaned out. The thinner air has fewer molecules per cubic foot, but gasoline has the same number per cubic foot. The correct fuel/air mixture is based on weight not volume, so the fuel flow has to be reduced for any given air flow in the intake system.

It is a long time since I've flown a piston powered aircraft so I can't speak to whether this specific aircraft has a fuel injection system or how it might manage the mixture. But on a carbureted engine or a simple fuel injection system the mixture must be manually adjusted during flight.

There are a few ways to derive the optimal mixture in flight, using exhaust temperature or manifold pressure or rpm or cylinder head temperature. Even seat of the pants. When properly leaned, the fuel used per mile at cruise altitude can be quite a bit less than at full rich at sea level. This is one reason piston aircraft like to cruise at about 10,000 ft.

Failing to lean the mixture properly can cause one to run out of fuel a lot sooner than expected. The engine appears to be running normally, so there is nothing to wake the pilot up such as rough running or backfiring.

Such a scenario is surprisingly common. Either forgetting to lean the mixture or not understanding the importance.


2) Flying at a lower altitude will burn more fuel. If the pilot planned a higher altitude and didn't have a lot of spare fuel, but then flew much lower, he/she could run out of fuel. Now this shouldn't be too tough of a problem to solve during the flight, as the fuel burn information is easily available in the aircraft flight manual, but someone who is lazy or poorly educated could fail to recalculate remaining fuel at the lower altitude.


3) If the headwinds are stronger than expected or the tailwinds weaker, the aircraft will use more fuel to get to the destination. The pilot should plan for at least the minimum reserves of 30 minutes fuel, and should periodically recalculate fuel remaining during the flight, but as in #2 above it requires a pilot to not be lazy or poorly educated.


4) Editorial Comment: As a now retired airline Captain, I observed the newer generation of pilots rely very heavily on electronics. They blindly accept whatever the GPS nav tells them, and they rely on the onboard electronics to inform them of winds aloft, fuel remaining, time to destination, etc. Prior to the GPS era we used paper maps and had to keep track of our progress continuously in flight. We carried a slide rule, pencil, and scrap paper to use as we flew, and we were very aware of our situation. I can easily picture a young CFI and student not being at all proficient in tracking their progress. All it takes is one error in programming data into an onboard system or one inaccurate sensor for the "box" to give them bad information.


5) Some aircraft require switching fuel tanks in flight. Each wing has a tank, and some aircraft can only select one or the other at a time. Pilots have forgotten to switch tanks and drained one dry, at which time the engine sputters and stops. Many have landed off-airport because they either didn't have time (altitude) to switch to the full tank and restart the engine, or they didn't diagnose the problem and thus didn't try to switch tanks. The dink who bought my old 1958 Cessna from me years ago did this and totaled it with one tank full. And, yes, Cessnas can and should have the fuel selector at BOTH, so this guy was a real idiot.

Sum Ting Wong. That model has fuel capacity of 48 gallons. Assumption here, that they departed Farmingdale (NY) with full tanks. That airplane should burn somewhere around 9.5 to 10 gallons / hour in cruise, so somewhere around 4.5 to 5 hours endurance. The Thursday morning flight from Farmingdale to Elizabeth City, as shown on FlightAware, was 3.5 hours, so there should have been at least one hour, maybe closer to 1.5 hours, of fuel on board when they landed at Elizabeth City.

The linked news article indicates that they refueled at Elizabeth City prior to departure for the return flight to Farmingdale, but even if they did not refuel (highly unlikely), they should have traveled at least 100 miles northeast from Elizabeth City before running both tanks empty, but they did not get anywhere near that far.

If I had to guess, I would agree with Rightward Rightwire (damn autocorrect) when he asked "did the aircraft run out of fuel, or did the engine run out of fuel? Big difference." My guess is that there was plenty of fuel in the tanks, but it was not reaching the engine. A couple of possibilities come to mind:

• Fuel pump. There are two on this airplane, the primary is driven mechanically by the engine. There is also an electric pump. It's been five or ten years since I last flew an airplane in that family (Piper Cherokee derivative), and I don't have a checklist or POH (Pilot Operating Handbook) for that model handy, but my memory is that the electric fuel pump is normally off, and is switched on for engine start, takeoff, prior to landing, and any time that the mechanical fuel pump fails to deliver proper fuel pressure. Failure of both pumps is highly unlikely, but could happen. It was ten years ago, probably more, that I had a scheduled departure from Florida to Ohio in the V-tail, with a planned fuel stop in the Atlanta area, where Roland Kraps was going to meet me for lunch. During pre-flight checks, I noticed that the electric fuel pump was intermittent, so I pulled up to the maintenance hangar. Took them a couple hours to get the problem straightened out, delaying my departure; I never did get to meet Roland.
  
  
• Another problem that is not uncommon, especially if the airplane has been sitting overnight, or if the fuel supply from the airport is contaminated, is water in the gas. This can come from condensation, especially when the air is humid and there are temperature swings. The water settles to the bottom of the tanks, and there is a drain valve at the lowest point of each tank, and another at the lowest point in the fuel system. A sample should be drained from each valve into a cup and inspected for water bubbles prior to flight. Was that done? Maybe not.
  
  
• Something else, unlikely but possible -- jet fuel pumped into the tanks of a gas-burning airplane. This has happened. Engine will probably start, but won't run for very long.

Something else bothers me about the linked article; there is definitely some inaccurate reporting. It is reported that "It happened at about 7 a.m. Thursday in Camden County, according to Camden County Sheriff Kevin Jones." According to FlightAware, the airplane was nowhere near North Carolina at 7 am Thursday morning, having departed Farmingdale NY just fifteen minutes earlier. So, the only thing that is clear at this point, is that there are a lot of facts missing from our knowledge. We'll have to wait for the report from the accident investigation team before we really know, and that will likely take a while.

quote:

Originally posted by erj_pilot:

quote:

Originally posted by Rightwire:
If I recall correctly, fuel gauges on private aircraft only need to be accurate when indicating empty.

You recall correctly.

Not a pilot, and I'm not doubting what you're saying.

If my car fuel gauge was only correct when it showed empty, I'd get it fixed as soon as I found that out.

It would be interesting to know the reasoning why the requirement for aircraft gauges is different. Do pilots have the option of getting more accurate fuel gauges if they care, or does it somehow not matter?

quote:

Originally posted by smschulz:
Ran out of gas money.

The winner. Ha !

Fly-Sig posted his comments while I was typing, so we overlapped a bit. In response to some of the valid points that he made,

The flight from NY to NC cruised at 6,000', which indicates that it was an IFR flight, maybe part of the instrument training curriculum. That altitude is reasonable for optimum cruising airspeed; of course, groundspeed will be affected by winds aloft.

The 2015 airplane was carbureted (this model did not switch to fuel injection until 2022), so definitely manual mixture control. I don't remember whether this model had an EGT (exhaust gas termperature) gauge as standard equipment, but that's a fairly common aftermarket addition if it was not original factory equipment. Poor mixture control is, as you say, a very common trait among pilots. It's one of the things that I noticed a lot, when I was instructing. It was usually worth at least an hour of ground school, with charts and graphs, and something that I emphasized on almost every training flight. It is the result of poor instruction. As a beginning student, I was mis-informed by my primary instructor that the mixture should be full rich for all flight conditions, and pulled back to full lean to shut the engine down; it was treated as an on / off switch, with nothing in between. Too many primary instructors are still teaching that way. If I were In Charge Of Things . . .

Fuel planning, re-calculation, updating progress using charts, E6B (circular slide rule), pencil, paper. You (Fly-Sig) probably remember mandatory reporting points for IFR flights, including the time estimate for the next waypoint. That was always an event that caused me to re-check my fuel calculation, as well.

Switching tanks. Yes, every low-wing single engine piston airplane that I'm familiar with, has a fuel selector that can only feed the engine from one tank. There is no "BOTH" position on any low-wing airplane that I have ever flown, so it's definitely possible to run a tank dry while there is plenty of fuel in another tank. That's another topic that I spent some time on, in ground school. Bonanzas are some of the most modified airplanes around, there are probably hundreds of STC (Supplemental Type Certificates) for after-market modifications. There were a LOT of Bonanzas produced, and they were a great market for add-ons and modifications. One V-tail that I used to rent before I bought mine, had SEVEN fuel tanks! It was a plumbing nightmare, and fuel management and planning was almost a full-time task for the pilot. The owner, who was a Chicago area dude, based the airplane at Midway and wanted non-stop capability for his fairly frequent vacation trips to The Bahamas (I never did it non-stop; I needed to stretch my legs, pee, and eat).

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הרחפת שלי מלאה בצלופחים

quote:

Originally posted by joel9507:

quote:

Originally posted by erj_pilot:

quote:

Originally posted by Rightwire:
If I recall correctly, fuel gauges on private aircraft only need to be accurate when indicating empty.

You recall correctly.

Not a pilot, and I'm not doubting what you're saying.

If my car fuel gauge was only correct when it showed empty, I'd get it fixed as soon as I found that out.

It would be interesting to know the reasoning why the requirement for aircraft gauges is different. Do pilots have the option of getting more accurate fuel gauges if they care, or does it somehow not matter?

Student pilots are taught from the very beginning that the fuel gauge is not to be trusted. You need to know how much fuel is on board prior to starting the flight; this is determined by a visual inspection of the fuel tanks. The POH is chock full of charts and graphs with details of fuel consumption rates, so the best fuel "gauge" is the clock. My V-tail, for example, burned 15.5 gallons / hour at my normal cruise power setting, so at any point in the flight I could just glance at the clock and know how much I still had on board. Smart-ass that I was (still am), after a flight when the fuel truck pulled up and the driver asked, "Top it off?" I might say something like, "Nah, fifty-seven gallons should be fine." Fuel truck drive would give me a "WTF?" look when 57 gallons filled the tanks right to the brim.

quote:

Originally posted by KDR:

quote:

Originally posted by Loswsmith:
In no particular order:

1) Instructor/pilot error

I can't imagine an instructor not calculating fuel for the flight plan correctly, or at least double checking the student.

You are aware that there have been pilots who have literally flown into mountains because they trusted gauges/eyes rather that their eyes/gauges (and yes BOTH things are right in any combination) and, again literally, co-pilots that knew this WAS IN FACT HAPPENING, and yet didn't do anything.

NEVER EVER underestimate the power of the human mind to deny the reality of a situation OR deceive itself to the unreality thereof.

quote:

Originally posted by V-Tail:

Fuel planning, re-calculation, updating progress using charts, E6B (circular slide rule), pencil, paper. You (Fly-Sig) probably remember mandatory reporting points for IFR flights, including the time estimate for the next waypoint. That was always an event that caused me to re-check my fuel calculation, as well.

The stories I could tell! Getting put into a hold these days in a modern airliner creates panic in the young pilot if he/she has to calculate bingo fuel for the alternate. Literally many hours are spent in ground school and the sim learning how to enter the necessary data into The Box (and where to find the correct sub-menu to do so).

Technology has disconnected pilots far too much from what is going on these days.