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Avgas vs Jet A: Wrong Fuel Caused Alaska Forestry Plane Crash
In May, 2020, three firefighters and one pilot took off from the Aniak runway in an Aero Commander 500 Shrike. They crash landed in a pond right off the runway. All four survived. According to the National Transportation Safety Board’s preliminary report, the culprit was the wrong fuel. The report says that a vendor tasked with filling up the plane was unclear which kind of fuel to use for the type of airplane, and filled it up with the wrong kind. The fuel vendor asked the pilot if he wanted… (www.kyuk.org) More...Sort type: [Top] [Newest]
fantastic response above.
you nailed it
you nailed it
Well said. I'm not a pilot, but the same goes for ANY and EVERY industry. I've been working on automobiles for as long as I can remember, and every so often I'll forget to tighten something. That's why nothing leaves here without a test drive. I've come up with routines that make this very rare, but it is always possible! I lose tools at an alarming rate - that problem I have never seemed to been able to fix ...
The one Perfect Man that walked this Earth was born Christmas Day. Everyone else, no matter who you are, is flawed.
The one Perfect Man that walked this Earth was born Christmas Day. Everyone else, no matter who you are, is flawed.
Amen!
Yours was the 1st response I’ve read so I had to read everybody else’s responses Yours is the best. I appreciated that
i read your comment and was so fulfilled that i did not have to scroll down and read anymore.
Excellent viewpoint. Everyone makes mistakes. I will never forget my 3 leg 100 mile trip, a requirement for a pilot license (1980s). I failed to lock the prime pump. This caused the engine to run rich, therefore I couldn't fly the plane and lean it out. What a simple mistake, that anyone can make. I never did that again! Thank God, I knew enough about engines at didn't push that little Piper 160.
If you are a pilot, the only appropriate takeaway from any accident involving pilot error is to conclude that this can happen to me if I let it. Dumb mistakes are made by brilliant people every day...but aviation shows little tolerance for this. We must learn from each other. We don’t each have time to find every limit on our own. This is why SOP’s, best practices, and written checklists exist. They are written in blood folks.
So here is a suggestion...extend a smidgeon of grace, because tomorrow it might be your turn to be smart and act dumb. It happens to all of us, and sometimes we don’t get away with it, and we will not grow out of it. But it is the duty of every Captain to spend a career trying their absolute best to do so.
I hope we all give the fuel truck a hard look before we allow a drop of fuel into our ships. That is the point of this forum. To learn...not to judge...because it will happen again to those of us who have forgotten how to learn.
J (ATP, Check Airman)