Like a sniper, it quietly picks us off in ones and twos — 20 or so every year. Except for an occasional embarrassed laugh in the pilot's lounge — shared in secret, and only with trusted friends — we don't talk about it much. Like alcoholism, it has familiar symptoms: denial, resignation, secrecy, and the codependent support of "friends." Our nasty little secret isn't about having too much "juice." It's about not having enough.
Running out of gas, or "fuel mismanagement," is not the leading cause of aircraft accidents, but it is up there with the heavy hitters. The combined NTSB accident and FAA incident databases list at least 1,374 occurrences from January 1, 1990, through December 31, 1999, in which the term fuel exhaustion was used somewhere in the narrative description. To be sure, those words are occasionally used to describe something other than just running out of gas, but not very often. Reading randomly selected cases suggests that the majority of them involve little more than a simple failure on the part of the pilot to load up enough gas to make the trip and to fly "within his means."
Fuel exhaustion is almost certainly underreported. But even if you knock off 10 percent of the total to account for statistical anomalies and for cases in which the term fuel exhaustion is misused, someone still runs an airplane out of gas in this country every three days. It happens in every type of airplane and to every sort of pilot using every sort of high and low technology. It happens to students, to instructors, and to veterans with thousands of hours.
Even if a fuel-spent pilot survives the long, silent glide into unfamiliar terrain, and the twisting and turning, and bent metal — if one of his passengers does not, he will face a life-time of secret anguish. If no one is hurt, there will be endless storytelling, and speculation that with time will become — in his own mind, at least — fact. Always there is some sort of recrimination: a violation or a lawsuit, perhaps. Months or years later the event may become a gold mine of dinner conversation — the sort of tale with which pilots hold the attention of uninitiated listeners who cannot distinguish between bravery and idiocy, at least where aviation is concerned. If there were no serious injuries, the listeners might have a good laugh together. And it might be funny, too, if it weren't for the fact that in the past 10 years nearly 250 people lost their lives because their magic carpet ran out of magic. Without counting the nonfatal injuries and property damage, that's the equivalent of a couple of major airline disasters every 10 years. Since this problem is almost entirely self-generated, it is within our power to stop it — any time we want to, and without attending any more safety meetings or taking any more ground schools or flight instruction.
Typical — and true — tales of woe
The Airport Shuttle. The private pilot was using a rental Cessna 172 to shuttle his bosses to and from a job site 92 nm west of the international airport where they were making airline connections. It was his second round trip of the day — his fourth leg without a fuel stop. Just after calling the nonfederal, contract tower at his destination, the engine quit. He began the long, sickening glide toward the flinty, flat-topped hills below. The controller responded to the pilot's initial routine call, but moments later officially closed down operations for the day. He heard the pilot's subsequent call for help, but since he was no longer officially on duty — and in defiance of reason and common sense — he locked the door and drove away, leaving the pilot to his fate. He alerted no one. (In a six-way conference call the next morning that included an FAA inspector, an NTSB accident investigator, a flight service specialist, a regional representative of the FAA's Air Traffic Division, and the duty officer of the FAA's Regional Communications Center, the controller's local supervisor explained that "it never occurred to him" to call anybody.)
The rocky terrain flipped the airplane over on its back, but the pilot and his passenger were not seriously injured. They disentangled themselves from the straps and walked a couple of miles down a farm road to a highway where they flagged down a passing highway patrolman — the first person who had the presence of mind to render aid.
Thinking he deserved a hero's accolades for superior performance under duress, the pilot became incensed when the FAA insisted on orally reexamining him (a Section 44709 reexamination — or "709") on his ability to do preflight planning. No in-flight examination was requested. Nevertheless, the pilot refused, preferring to surrender his certificate rather than his pride.
Mr. Bean. The commercially rated pilot was a highly educated professional, intelligent and fastidious to a fault. On the day of the accident, he planned every detail of the flight down to the creases in his charts. His Cessna Cardinal even had a high-tech fuel computer that he used to track every ounce of consumption. In spite of his best efforts, the engine quit cold during his descent to an intermediate fuel stop.
When it became obvious that he wouldn't make the runway, he planted the airplane in a field of thigh-high soybeans. After unloading his family and pouring extra gas into his tank (which he obtained from the nearby airport operator), he blasted out of the beans and through a ditch, smacking a berm and severely bending the right horizontal stabilizer on a fence post. This impact twisted the entire tail assembly approximately 5 degrees counterclockwise. Undaunted, the pilot taxied down a gravel farm road to a nearby blacktop, whereupon he put the lash to his trusty steed and flew it the rest of the way to the airport. His wife and child rode back to the airport in the fuel truck. After a local mechanic assessed the damage and declared that the aircraft would likely be a total loss because of the fuselage damage, the airport manager observed the pilot loading his family back into the airplane for another takeoff. Figuring he was getting skinned by a couple of country airport bumpkins in overalls, this city boy had decided to get a second opinion, and the nearest to be had was 50 miles away. The airport manager did everything — short of lying down in front of the nosewheel — to keep this pilot from making the most spectacular mistake of his life. Eventually, the pilot relented, and the manager called the FAA.
Although the pilot complied with the flight standards district office's (FSDO) request for an oral 709, he resented every minute of it. He hadn't done anything wrong. His airplane should have made it with exactly 30 minutes to spare. Unrepentant, he showed up at his home FSDO office fully prepared to prove it.
Dark Luck. The private pilot was a thoughtful, intelligent software engineer for an aviation-related firm in the Midwest. She liked to fly during her time off. On the day of the accident, she was on her way to celebrate the Independence Day holiday with friends in a small town 166 nm to the west. During her preflight of the club-owned Cessna 150, she noticed that the tanks were a little down, but thought nothing of it since she expected to fly for only about two hours. With her handheld GPS by her side, she departed into the waning afternoon sun. During her descent — three hours and eight minutes later — the engine failed. The airplane came to rest upside down in a wheat field in total darkness — 300 feet short of a dense row of trees. Even though her GPS continuously warned that she was flying into gale-force headwinds, she passed up at least two opportunities to refuel.
Although the pilot accepted the FAA's opportunity to participate in the Remedial Training Program, she never completely accepted what was obvious to everyone else: She drove the tanks dry.
"We have met the enemy
I and he is us," quipped cartoonist Al Capp. Even though they differ in detail, what unites these stories is their mundane, almost depressing, regularity. The common thread is that these people simply ran out of gas, mostly for the same reasons, and all within five miles of their destination. Furthermore, in two out of three of these cases the pilot never looked in the tanks before departure. They each had ample opportunity to remedy their situation, yet they ignored it. In the end, they clung to denial even when it became apparent that there would be little or no penalty for coming clean. What makes such stories interesting is the creative ways people have of doing the same thing over and over again — affording each of us the detached illusion that "they" are not like "us."
But they are like us. They, and thousands of others like them, are normal, intelligent people with experience and training. They suffered the same delusions that we suffer. They clung to denial just as we do, even when it became obvious what their problem was. Most pilots of any experience will read at least one of these stories with a secret prayer of thanksgiving: "There, but for the grace of God, go I."
Understanding the problem
Both the danger and the source of the fuel exhaustion problem are the same: inconvenience and denial. Fuel exhaustion is dangerously prevalent precisely because of inconvenience. It's inconvenient figuring out just how much gas is on the airplane, and how much it really uses. Furthermore, it means using experience to predict the future. It means knowing your airplane — its habits and its appetites.
Aerial gas stations aren't as thickly distributed as their roadside counterparts. Although coming down is inevitable, it's a pain to come down early. It means admitting to one's prideful self and to all the world that the original plan didn't work. If a pilot waits until the bitter end — mixing inconvenience with an unhealthy dose of denial — he can't just roll to a stop on the shoulder, whip out a cell phone, and call "Triple-A." Is this all too obvious? Yes. But every three days someone behaves as if it is not. Many more, no doubt, arrive at their destinations with more liquid on their brows than in their tanks. Until a pilot has intimate knowledge of his airplane — until he knows how fast it really goes, how much gas it really holds and how to get it absolutely full, and how much fuel it uses at various power settings and conditions — a pilot should apply at least a 10- to 15-percent penalty to the numbers he has been told to expect. He should thereafter track his actual performance leg-by-leg as carefully as he would track the cash in his checking account. Every time the engine or a major fuel system component is overhauled the process starts all over again.
Tape those gauges
OK, a pilot probably can't literally do this, either. It would be tantamount to disabling a piece of equipment that is required under FAR 91.205. But there's nothing in the regulations that requires the pilot to believe them — and that's fortunate because certification rules require only that "each fuel quantity indicator be calibrated to read 'zero' during level flight when the quantity of fuel remaining in the tank is equal to the unusable fuel supply" (FARs 23 and 25, Sections 1337[b][1]). They can tell lies all day, but on the day they leave the factory — and in level flight only — the gauges are supposed to agree with the engine when it quits for lack of fuel.
Ever notice how, after a car is filled with gas, it rides for miles before the gauge ever moves? The same thing is true for most light aircraft. Since most fuel gauges will read "full" long before the tanks are actually full, they will lie grievously at the very time they are most needed — during preflight. There is only one way to know how much gas is really in the tank: Get out there and have a look. Make sure they're really full, or "stick" them with a calibrated quantity indicator that is known to be reliable. (Tank sticks are cheap, or can be homemade by emptying the tank, filling it back up a few gallons at a time, and marking an unvarnished dowel rod with each new increment.) Does this seem like something about which only a simpleton would need to be reminded? Maybe. But of the 10 or so fuel-related accidents I investigated as an FAA inspector, nearly all involved pilots who did not ascertain for themselves how much fuel they actually had on board before departure. Most never even bothered to actually look into Ihe gas tank. All but one crashed within five miles of the destination.
The high-wing trap
There is a trap unique to certain high-wing aircraft that can steal reserve fuel. Aircraft using a fuel selector with a Both or On position allowing the engine to feed from both sides at the same time (principally Cessna 150s, 172s, 177s, and 182s) also allow the fuel to seek its own level by migrating from one side to the other through the selector valve. If the selector is left on Both or On while the aircraft is parked on a sloped or uneven surface, fuel will move to the low side and vent overboard once that tank begins to overfill. It will continue to vent until the overall fuel level reaches the level of the highest point in the vent line. Since the distance between the tanks magnifies even the smallest slope, it doesn't take much to lose a 30-minute reserve.
Furthermore, this migration begins as soon as the line operator begins to deliver fuel. While he's pumping gas, moving the ladder, and rearranging the hose, gas is shifting from the high side to the low side. When he's done, fuel moves back across until it again finds its own level, resulting in two tanks that are slightly less than full. The combined effect of these phenomena inspired Cessna to put a note on the fuel system diagram of later-model aircraft advising the owner/operator that in order to achieve maximum fuel capacity the selector should be moved to the Left or Right position while on the ground.
High technology
Fancy fuel counters, fuel flow computers, and GPSs are great, but they're no substitute for common sense. Fuel computers only know what they're told. If they are lied to they will lie in return. No one is that careless, right? Yet, this accounts for at least two fuel-related accidents I have personally investigated, one of which is described earlier.
Fortunately, all the technology needed for tracking fuel consumption is already widely available, and has been, both accurately and portably, since the middle of the eighteenth century. It's called a "chronometer" — a watch — and a super-accurate one can be bought anywhere for less than 50 bucks. Combined with knowledge of initial fuel quantity and a hard personal limit — something more conservative than the law requires — its use in fuel management would seem elementary. Yet nearly every person who has run out of gas had one strapped to his wrist, stuffed in his pocket, or fixed to the instrument panel. Flight instructors know that eye, hand, and brain are inextricably tied together. Pilots, particularly student pilots, often need something tangible to reinforce their thought processes. For those who still carry a "whiz wheel" — which includes most students whose instructors want them to learn basic navigation skills before becoming slaves to high technology — there is a simple technique that can easily be learned. While en route, place what's left of the total personal time limit (on the inner scale) under the number of miles to be flown (on the outer scale). Find the speed index on the inner scale, and note on the outer scale the speed that must be flown to make the destination within the time limit. Fly for a while. Then repeat the calculation using the miles-to-go over the time-to-go. If the speed you must fly increases — even a little bit — the destination is not within reach. The flight must divert.
Hair of the dog
The young instructor was in a hurry. His student was standing there, ready to go, the lineman was nowhere in sight, and the pump was just out of reach. "This thing only burns seven gallons an hour," he thought. "Maybe we've got enough for one more flight." So he looked at the gauges — just a hair over 5 per side — and he looked in the tanks. Down, yes — and the bottoms of the tanks were dry on the high end — but gas was visible on both sides. And, after all, the gauges said he had about 10 gallons. "If I fly with her for 45 minutes or so, I'll get this done and still have 30 minutes' reserve," he thought.
About 30 minutes into the flight, however, during a rectangular pattern, the engine quit. The instructor did his prelanding checklist, just as his instructor had taught him: "Gas, switch tanks," he muttered, "mixture, rich; fuel pump, on." In something slightly less than an eternity, the engine forgave him and roared back to life.
"The left tank is empty," he announced to his student. "Everything's OK, though," he lied, "but as a precaution — just to be safe — we're going to cut this lesson short and return to the airport. Meanwhile," he improvised, "this is an excellent opportunity for you to learn the procedure for engine failure. Remember the prelanding checklist" he yammered, as if the engine noise wasn't enough to cover his stupidity.
As he turned toward the runway, it seemed to recede — the way cool mountain waters retreat before a desert caravan.
"Now, I don't want you to get the idea that this is a normal approach," he went on. "We won't be flying our patterns this way. As a precaution, though, we will fly directly to the runway — just to be safe."
Directly, indeed! No downwind, no final, only an angular base leg, a turning flare to touchdown, taxi, and quiet. The instructor accompanied his student to the office door while the lineman — a hulking college student who was himself a pilot — dragged the fuel hose to the wing.
His student debriefed and gone — and none the wiser to his folly, he thought — the instructor sauntered out onto the ramp, and found himself in the towering shadow of the lineman.
"What's the usable fuel on that thing?" asked the lineman.
"Thirty," answered the instructor. "But you knew that."
"Yep. Know how much fuel I put on her?" He didn't wait for an answer: "Twenty-nine-point-five."
*You're an idiot," he added for emphasis.
And so he was. Or maybe he was just a guy like you and me, with his head temporarily on the wrong planet. Later, however, I found a way to use this young man's experience as a teaching technique. During a cross-country training flight with my student-pilot wife, I waited until we were within five miles of our destination. I made sure she was focused on entering the pattern, then pulled the power.
As we drifted below all hope I asked, "Think you can make it?"
One look said it all, but "you're an idiot," she added for emphasis.
"Just remember how this feels right now, " I said, "the adrenaline, the sinking hopelessness, the stupidity. Because that's exactly how it feels to run out of gas, and this is where it mostly happens — in plain sight of the airport, and just out of reach. If you ever feel like pushing your time limit," I said as I restored the engine, "remember how this feels."
"There," I thought, "but for the grace of God, went I."
Eric Jaderborg, AOPA 739930, is a retired FAA inspector. He is a flight instructor and the owner of an Aeronca Champ that he is restoring.
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