A Serious Post From Me

[Theotokos]

Ok enough with the Days of Our Life. Here is a scenerio from my pre-flight school brain. I did the research on this one.

It is night and you are on the transatlantic for UPS. You are in a Boeing 777 at a cruise of FL385 when you get a low fuel warning. You glance at your fuel gages and they are normal. You are still over land so there are plenty of places to abort. Do you:

A) Assume it is just some error with the low fuel warning malfunction and fly on.
B) Abort flight and have a mechanic check it out.

[alphaone]

Originally Posted by Theotokos

Ok enough with the Days of Our Life. Here is a scenerio from my pre-flight school brain. I did the research on this one.

It is night and you are on the transatlantic for UPS. You are in a Boeing 777 at a cruise of FL385 when you get a low fuel warning. You glance at your fuel gages and they are normal. You are still over land so there are plenty of places to abort. Do you:

A) Assume it is just some error with the low fuel warning malfunction and fly on.
B) Abort flight and have a mechanic check it out.

Land as soon as practical before you get over a large body of water. Remember the AirTransat A330 that thought the low fuel warning was just an anomaly?

P.S. does UPS even have 777s?

[Kingairer]

First you check the logbook(can) and realize that you arent in the right airplane b/c UPS doesnt have 777s! Then you pull out your NASA report....I cant find the dern smilies, but they are there im just messing with ya.

[JEP]

Originally Posted by Theotokos

Ok enough with the Days of Our Life. Here is a scenerio from my pre-flight school brain. I did the research on this one.

It is night and you are on the transatlantic for UPS. You are in a Boeing 777 at a cruise of FL385 when you get a low fuel warning. You glance at your fuel gages and they are normal. You are still over land so there are plenty of places to abort. Do you:

A) Assume it is just some error with the low fuel warning malfunction and fly on.
B) Abort flight and have a mechanic check it out.

A) Never assume.........
B) Pull out the checklist..........
C) FL385?????? My brain may be screwy on the night shift, but I believe the FL*** are all even thousands.......
D) Didn't we talk about these posts.


At least this isn't as crazy as the others.

[Kingairer]

And then your realize your missing your kid! You swear she was here! she even wrote something on the window.....

[DE727UPS]

What kind of low fuel warning? Only thing I've seen was an FMC message saying "insufficient fuel". First, I changed the fuel reserve number from 7K to 6K and it made the warning go away. But the flight plan called for 7K reserve. So that was sort of cheating (this was before takeoff, by the way). Then, I remembered I was supposed to enter the forcast winds into the FMC but never do because I'm lazy and it never mattered before. So I entered the forcast winds and changed the reserve fuel back to 7K and, whaaa lhaaa, the FMC was happy. Always nice to have a happy FMC, dontcha know.

A real low fuel warning, and I know we don't have a low fuel light on the 767, though it could be an EICAS message...anyhow, if that happened 2 hours into a 10 hour flight I'd be pretty sure it was bad indication or a REALLY bad fuel leak. You'd get into the checklist and do what it says. Lacking a firm indication that's it's a bad gage reading, I think landing at the nearest suitable would be prudent.

[Theotokos]

I did a google on this one to see what jets had a low fuel warning if any. I would assume most have some form of warning but then a movie once said, "When you assume, you make an ass our of you and me." I have done that plenty of times with my 4 engine planes that only have two engines. From what I could tell, and maybe I misread, the 777 has some form of a low fuel warning with other warnings such as ground proximity. And I did not do the resarch on UPS planes. I just through some airline in there off the top of my head.

[supercell86]

abort flight, unless you wanna trust your life with a stupid light....my instructor always told me in aviation, if you ever have a doubt like that you need to stop what youre doing and land the airplane.

[Theotokos]

Yes I would not take the chance

[BobDDuck]

Ok, different question (I can't post new topics here so I guess I'll have to hijack the old ones!)

You are flying out of Philly and are tankering no fuel (so you just have what is needed for flight plus taxi and reserve. They have you down for enough fuel for a 15 min taxi (with one engine off until near the top of the line). You turn the corner and there are a whole lot of planes lined up to go. Way more then 15 min. Do you:

a) Keep going, hope it goes fast and you get off the ground before you burn through your min take off fuel?

b) Go out to the line up with the assumption that you will have to come back but are going to try anways and prevent the flight being delayed?

c) Go back to the gate and get more fuel?

I saw a variation of this today. We were a little tight on fuel, but were number 2 for the runway on our Taxi way (SA for 27L for those of you that know PHL). However, when the sequence came out we were number 13 behind a whole lot of 757s (think 2 min for wake turb.) Ended up having to go back the gate to get more gas. 1 hour later when we get back out to the runway there is only one other aircraft out there. Stupid flight bank system!

[FlyChicaga]

For the first question to Theokosos, we have a low fuel EICAS caution. It highlights the fuel quantity on our Multi-Function Fuel Page Display if it goes below I think 800 lbs. So I'd check that page. If we were showing fuel, and I had been keeping up on fuel burns over each waypoint (I do usually in some manner), then I might continue. If I didn't have an indication of fuel quantity, I'd divert to the nearest suitable airport and get the situation sorted out.

For the section question from BobBDuck, what I always do in that situation is tell ATC we are fuel critical. I'll always put it this way: "Tower, Jetlink 1234, we are running into a tight fuel situation here, and need to be airborne in the next 15 minutes or else we'll need to return to the gate. Can you expect us to be off in 15 minutes?" If they say no, I'll consider going back and tankering some more gas. No point in waiting 15 minutes, then going back. That's just 15 minutes longer that the pax may miss their connections. Plus, if we go in now, and come out 15 minutes earlier, we might just miss another bank of departures. Sometimes if you tell them you need to get going, they'll work you in line. Depends on the airport, and whether it's just a takeoff delay, or a arrival flow delay into your destination.

[Kingairer]

No way I would ever push back with that little fuel at PHL or any airport such as that.

[DE727UPS]

"No way I would ever push back with that little fuel at PHL or any airport such as that"

I hear Philly sucks. The Capt I was flying with a couple days ago told me some horror stories about delays, shutting down both engines in a 767, and even having to go back for more gas once. Then he tells me what a great trip it is and I should bid it next time...

[Doug Taylor]

"INSUFFICIENT FUEL" warnings are somewhat common and usually an annoyance.

If you're flying a long transcon and you didn't insert all of the wind data along the flight and it's forecast to significantly change, you can get an "INSUFFICIENT FUEL" warning in the FMS.

Or sometimes if you extend the centerline of the runway during approach and the line extends off into infinity, you might get one as well.

[Kingairer]

Im guessing he saw the AirTransat thing thats been playing on Discovery Channel.

[BobDDuck]

Originally Posted by Kingairer

No way I would ever push back with that little fuel at PHL or any airport such as that.

It's a fine line. Every 100 gallons of Jet A we carry we need another 20 gallons just to truck it along. Once we did get out of PHL my captain and I were trying to figure out if all the fuel/money saved by not tankering large amounts of gas came out ahead compared to the times when they guess wrong and time/fuel is wasted going back to the gate. A year to year or even month to month view it would be interesting to see.

[Kingairer]

But you also have to look at how much money you lost by being an hour late+. That airplane is going to be playing catch up all day, Pax miss their connection, need to get a hotel, bags lost, company takes a hit for being late, etc etc. Me personally, I would never taxi out knowing that I have to single engine taxi and hope to be #2 for departure to make everything work out.

[Sprint100]

Originally Posted by Theotokos

Ok enough with the Days of Our Life. Here is a scenerio from my pre-flight school brain. I did the research on this one.

It is night and you are on the transatlantic for UPS. You are in a Boeing 777 at a cruise of FL385 when you get a low fuel warning. You glance at your fuel gages and they are normal. You are still over land so there are plenty of places to abort. Do you:

A) Assume it is just some error with the low fuel warning malfunction and fly on.
B) Abort flight and have a mechanic check it out.

Quick question for you. No matter what plane you are flying, when the low fuel level warning.light comes on, why would you even consider A on any flight.

[Theotokos]

Me, I would stop. Just to see if there are any pilots who might say, "Everything else is normal. It would only delay us." This is usually how accidents happen though. Pilots make bad decisions.