Final Safety Advice and Resources

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Sessions average about twenty one dollars with insurance, and some pay as little as zero dollars depending on their plan. Visit growth therapy com dot slash book now to get started. That's growth therapy dot com slash book now. Growth therapy dot com slash book now, availability and coverage by state and insurance plan NASA five seven contact tower one two eight point one five Caution, caution , manual, fuel , manual fuel . I'm John Goya . I'm Greg Faith and I'm Tardrus and we are the flight safety detectives . Between us, we have over a century of aviation, accident, investigation and safety experience to draw on as we discuss issues that affect all of us. So we are qualified to share our perspect ives on accidents and incidents and what can be learned from them for the future. We're proud to say that we have two sponsors that really relate to the topic of aviation safety , thefession Palro Aviation Maintenance Association or PAMA , and a BEMPO insurance . Later on in the show, we'll tell you how you can get a five percent discount on your returns just for listening to the show. We don't just dissect the official reports. In every episode we identify safety issues and take the mystery out of accident investigations . So maybe pilots and their planes can have safer flights ahead . Well, good afternoon, Todd, how are you? I'm doing just fine . All right, so here we are again . And today I've asked you, it's you and I alone again and today I've asked you to take a look at a fuel accident that I well, it's in a fueling event that I had discovered by all our searching. We talked about it in the last issue about how we get to information that we talk about . And we use NTSB , the NASA form, which is aviation safety reporting system and even newspaper articles to focus in on an accident and then we dig in looking for the details . But this one comes to us from the ASRS where pilots have the opportunity pilots, mechanics, and others, flight attendants have the opportunity to report to the government in a way that they're not going to get in trouble , problems that they've had or events that they had which were not an accident , but have meaning to other pilots and other persons in aviation . So it's an attempt to learn from the mistakes of others. And we have a really interesting one today involving a student pilot and loss of fuel . And again, the reason why I pop at the end of every single podcast about doing pre planning and a good pre flight is we find these damn things over and over and over again . Sometimes they don't have enough information for us to use them on a podcast , but they are happening way too often. Running out of fuel is absolutely the I can't even think of the words to use because you never should run out of fuel . I mean, that's a basic piece of flying . And oftentimes it's making assumptions . Make an assumption that you know the average rate of f uel consumption on an airplane is often found in the book , you know, in the manual. You might burn twelve, fourteen gallons an hour. So you're doing the math in your head saying, oh wow, I got twenty five gallons in the tank, I got two hours or three hours, whatever the numbers work out to . But that's in an airplane that's not doing much except flying. Go out there and do some maneuvering around , take off and landing and spins and stalls , which people you don't do much of that today, but when I was flying, that's what we did all the time . So in any event, you're not moving you're using more fuel than the manual says for the average burn . You've got to pay attention to all of that . So why don't we , why don't you start it off and I'll chime in on some of this . We were discussing after we did our previous show, hey, let's do fuel exhaustion. We went to the ASRS database because we were doing that in the last show and we decided let's just go for the most recent complete year of data twenty twenty five and see what we can find. Then we came across this one and the more we try to dig into it, the more well, head scratching it became on several levels. By the way, when it comes to fuel, my belief is always been the least reliable instrument in the aircraft is the fuel gauge . And as we go into the story, you'll see that they clearly did some things right at some points of the flight and other points of the flight it's not clear they were that careful with their fuel, but I digress . Let's get to the actual event . And for those of you watching the video version of this, I'm putting the first part of the event on the screen . And the ASRS traditionally doesn't give precise information as to time, date and location. For example, this event happened in May of twenty twenty five . It doesn't say what day in May. It happened between local time midnight and six AM . Doesn't give the precise time. Doesn't give the exact airport either. It only has some vague hints in this as to where this took place. We have our suspicions, but again, we don't know exactly where this took place. That is one of the strengths of this database . If you as a pilot or crew member or anyone who submits a report, which could be an air traffic controller, it could be a passenger, it could be a flight attendant . Your identity is protected. Your name is not going to show up . They will de identify the event so that it be diff'icllult or imposs to find out who you are personally . You might be able to narrow it down to an airport or a state because of the information and report, but they won't narrow it down to you. So don't be afraid to make a report to the ASRS . So the story here is we have Assessin one hundred and fifty. It's unclear whether it was a conventional tail dragger aircraft or trigle gear aircra ft. And this was operating under Part ninety one, meaning it's not a commercial flight. There was a crew of two , and it was a VFR flight, and there was some training going on. The training was a combination of things , and this is where the pre flight planning comes into play . The plan was to do one hundred nautical mile cross country , ten take off and landings at a towered airport and doing this all at night. They also plan to do some other maneuvers after their last planned fuel stop going back home. And given that this was a hundred nautical miles and they're trying to do this at night. I'm presuming that this would have taken place , was planned to take place well before local sunrise . One of the things I thought about is well, if you're doing this , you're taking off somewhere around midnight local time, well, between midnight and six AM local time. Here's my question . Is this your normal sleep wake cycle? Is this this pilot and the person who's flying with them, safety pilot or CFI's not clear? Is this your normal duty day ? Now if you're doing work at midnight planning to land at six in the morning, I'm telling you, if it's not your normal cycle, it's going to be a bit of a challenge physically for you to be at the top of your game mentally throughout this. That's one thing . When they started, they filled the tank to twenty five gallons and I checked online only and in general the maximum fuel capacity of a cessom one hundred and fifty is twenty six gallons. So presumably they were filling this tank almost to the top. And specifically, they verified it using a dipstick in addition to the aircraft's fuel gauges . I like this because dipsticks are much more reliable than a fuel gauge My personal rule of thumb is if the fuel gauge is say a quar ter tank, I'm empty. I'm not going to take off, or if I'm flying, I'm going to land in refuel as soon as possible because I typically fly a Cessna one hundred and seventy two, a somewhat upgraded version of the Cessna one hundred fifty . So let's see if we can set the stage here . They take off from their first airport . They do ten takeoff and landings at the Towered Airport , presumably the airport that took off from . Then they flew a hundred nautical miles. What do you think before you go on , how long would you take do you think it would take to do ten at a tower airport? It's nighttime, so conceivably that the traffic flow is low or non existent . Well, let's just take a rule of thumb. Let's say you did a six minute circuit . It might be longer or shorter than that, but let's start with six minutes. Ten take off and landings, we're talking an hour, just for the flying port portion of it. So we also have that pre flight check, we have the taxing, then we have the ten circuits, then we do a hundred and nautical mile tre.k Let's assume that we have zero wind and you're going at the cruising speed of SSM one hundred fifty, roughly around one hundred knots an hour, a hundred knots, rather. So that's another hour. So we're talking about , two and a half hours right out the gate just from pre flight , ten circuits , ten a hundred nautical miles . And it's at night, in the middle of the night . So they go a hundred miles. We have on the screen the narrative . After completing that portion, they continue their flight to a third airport. They took off from Airport one . Then they went to Airport two to do the ten takeoffs in landings, no telling how far Airport two was from Airport one . So we're talking, I said before , at least an hour and a half all told, plus the time it takes to go from airport one to airport two. Let's just call that twenty minutes. Okay, let's call it twenty minutes. So we're talking almost two hours here. After completing that portion, we continued our flight to the third airport. They landed there to complete the hundred automile cross country requirement, then proceeded to airport four . They're implying that this was either a touch and go or stop and go. Basically they landed at Airport three, didn't do much there. Then they went straight to airport four to refuel. So let's get into this. We have ten the original takeoff. We have ten circuits at the second airport . We have the landing and the takeoff from the third airport. So we're talking two hours, maybe two hours plus . How much fuel is left? Well, they know exactly what they had when they took off, because they had the tipstick . They're flying for a couple of hours. They're not doing boring cruising flight at maximum endurance they're doing some fairly fuel intensive things with takeoff and landings and rising and descending and such . So how much fuel do you think you have left? I don't know. I've never flown to Susan fifty . But I would have been concerned during the planning portion unless I've done this before , if this is my first time ever doing an aggressive flight plan like this , I'd be a little bit more conservative . As in maybe I'd do two flights, one where I get my hundred nautical miles in, and another where I get my night takeoff and landing zen . There's no well there are reasons to do all at once. But when you layer on top of this, it's in the middle of the night . Now we're adding some complications to it. So let's go back to the story. They're flying into Airport four . Their intention was to land there , wait for sunrise, do some pre flight, then do some commercial maneuverings before they go back to the home airport. So like I said, very aggressive plan here . They're descending into the Airport three . This is an area, as I said with let me get their wording with wind turbines and power lines when they run out of fuel . And they look around to see where they can land. They check their electronic flight bag and they check what's outside. They see there's a road and they land on the road. That was all good . No damage to the aircraft. The next day they get it refueled and with the help of law enforcement they're able to take off again . Now, here's what they said at the end . We concluded that it was likely due to fuel starvation as both fuel tanks were found to be empty . It's a good shirlock move to say that . Our preflight calculations and fuel gauges had confirm ed we had sufficient fuel to maintain legal to remain legal under NightVFR . Well, I think we've said this before in many other accidents. Just because it's legal doesn't make it smart. To investigate further, we inspected the aircraft for fuel leaks, none were found. After refueling the aircraft, we conducted an engine run up. All engine parameters were within operational safe limits. With the assistance of local authorities, we temporarily blocked highway traffic , inspected the area for obstacles and the intended take off path. All good. Local law enforcement agreed to help block traffic on both sides of the highway to allow for a safe takeoff run. Our thanks to law enforcement for helping them out here . But one thing I noticed after reading through this couple times , they mentioned using the dipstick that checked for fuel before the first flight They refueled it obviously on the road after they land ed, and they had no mention of using the dipstick again . So my question is did they or did they not do that? If I were an investigator or overseeing this investigation, I'd ask that simple question What was your thinking process to design this flight plan in the first place ? Why did you did you or did you not check the fuel with the dipstick at your last takeoff . What was your history, your experience with doing this kind of flight? Have you ever done a night cross country combined with this many takeoff and landings combined with other things all on the same flight . And another thing that was not mentioned specifically in this , there were two pilots on the aircraft . One apparently was instrument rated , and the other was a private pilot . This person was preparing for a check ride of some sort . I'm assuming it was a private pilot. And they mention a total number of hours of the flight crew two hundred fifty point eight hours in the last ninety days , ninety seven point seven one hours experience in type . It wasn't clear from this whether they were talking about both pilots or just the pilot in command Hello aviation enthusiasts, safety professionals and curious minds. Welcome to Flight Safety Detectives . We are thrilled that you drop by . Here , we dive deep into the world of aviation safety . From incident investigations and technical analysis lessons learn ed in what they mean for safer skies . As a member of our channel, you get exclusive member only perks , first access to new episodes , live stream discussions and Q and A sessions . We are a community of fellow safety detectives who love aviation as much as you do. If you're passionate about aviation or just curious about how things work, we'd love to have you on board. Hit join , ring the bell to be notified and jump into the discussions in the comments. Swap in because together we're going to explore aviation safety like never before. Fortunately , nothing happened in the sense of anyone getting injured, any substantial damage to the aircraft, or to persons or property on the ground, so this is not something that would have been reported as an FA investigation or an NTSP investigation. And John, you said you looked and saw no mention of this in the FA database, correct? It's not an FAA database So they didn't they didn't have reported or if they did report it, the FAA person didn't didn't meet the trigger for them to report it Now, before we go on, I don't want to seem to be too harsh toward the people on board this aircraft, because, after all, in spite of everything that happened , it all ended well for everyone . And the person had the presence of mind to swallow his or her pride , actually write down what happened and share it with the world at large so we can all learn from it . And I'm made up I'm saying that there was enough light for them to see the highway . Because if in an area where there's a lot of wind turbines, those are typically not where there's a lot of houses . You know at Palm Springs, there's a lot of wind turbines , but there's in a lot of open area, but the highways are not lit . So you know, here we are at four or five o'clock in the morning and he was able to see the highway. No traffic. He says that in the report there was no traffic . So that was amazing and lucky for him that they were able to see the highway . Thank God there was no wires because you never would have seen them. Another thing that was mentioned in the narrative was that they used their EFP, their electronic flight bag, presumably something like a four flight on their iPad or something to look for a place to land. So that ays that they had some presence of mind because Assessum one hundred and fifty, it's an older model Cessna doesn't mention that this was a heavily modified aircraft, what they call a technically advanced aircraft with glass cockpit, but this electronic flight bag would have come in very, very handy in that situation because if you can't see the ground , at least you could see relative to where you are where the dangers might be. Now the wind turbines , typically, especially out west, those are going to be tall enough to have red flashing beacons on top. So they would have been able to see those . But like you said, John, how are they going to see the road at night if there's no cars out there? No lights on the ro ad . Would have been a challenge ? No , a lot of good luck came these pilots way . You know, you could never plan for all the good luck they had with they're unfortunate. They ran out of fuel. They made a mistake , but the stars lined up for them to recover from that mistake , which doesn't often happen to most pilots . And it's a question of planning that well, obviously they had a good luck at the end . They put themselves in a challenging position at the beginning of this with their flight plan , for example, let's say it's not going to be a stretch for me to do ten circuits around the field and a cross country flight . How would I arrange things ? Would I do it so that the first part of my flight is the one hundred nautical mile cross country, so it's relatively sure I'll have fuel. And then I go to a towered airport where I do my ten touch and goes, where if I do have fuel exhaustion, I'm already in the pattern in some form of fash ion, presumably with a runaway that might actually be lighted , so it would have been much less of a stretch to land the aircraft. I think they should have, like you said, should have done it the other way around . Get the hundred nautical miles, land fuel up and then go plate with your ten landings . Now one more thing we talked about off air. Where did this happen? Well the way ASRS works , they accept reports from any place in the U. S. Airspace or any place in the world involving a U. S. registered aircraft given they mention wind turbines, multiple airports in a fairly short range from where this aircraft took off . And I thought to myself, okay, there are a lot of places with wind turbines, fewer places that have stuff around thirty seven hundred feet. We did a very, very quick search for wind turbines and three thousand seven hundred feet altitude around the U. S. There was a set of wind turbines around Tahatchy, California, which is near Edwards Air Force Base where he used to be stationed. And even when I was there forty years ago, there were smaller windmills in today, but windmills all around that mountain range . But it doesn't make sense that it would have been in the flat areas near to Hatchipe. It would have been up in the hills. And the narrative did say that you had wind turbines and you had a road in the middle. So was it in southern California? Was it elsewhere in the U. S. I don't know. But if you happen to be flying in a place that has a lot of windmills and around three thousand seven hundred feet above mean sea level , and you're planning on doing an aggressive sort of training fight like this , do me a favor try and do it in the daytime as much as possible . I'm just so I'm happy that these two guys walked away from it . And I hope they learned something from all of that . And I hope that some of the pilots listening to us will take the heed to do that good session of pre planning , do a good pre flight . Preplaning means fuel and weather , which is the ones I hop on all the time , especially weather because many, many accidents occur because the pilots don't give adequate consideration for the weather in between where you are and where you're going. So Todd, you can have the last the second and the last word as usual . And the second and the last word is brought to you by the Aviation Safety Reporting System. Why do I say that? Because I know this from personal experience working with this system, there are roughly a quarter million events in this database accessible online to anyone anywhere around the world. So let's say that you have some questions about a particular situation . But what if I have XYZ happen? Do yourself a favor , go visit the website , go search for something like this, search for like words in the narrative part of it and see if you come up with something . You know, start wide , for example, take the last ten years, look for fuel exhaustion. I did this. There's a whole bunch of stuff. And you say, okay, too many things. Let's go for the last year . We had five . Okay , we were able to go through four of the five and we hit a jackpot on number four . So you go ahead and do this yourself for an issue of interest to you and see if you don't hit the jackpot . Okay, thank you Todd . And again for my last word, it's always the same and it will remain the same until we stop having these kinds of accidents, but if you're going to go fly, pre plan what you're doing