FlySacto
Ale User
- Joined
- Jan 22, 2002
- Posts
- 345
Here's a chance to pass along some info that I hope will do someone some good. We hope to learn from others mistakes and not repeat them. Please learn from mine!
One of my occasional clients called me the other day saying he picked up a Turbo Aztec and still needed to do some flying after ferrying the airplane from Florida to California to satisfy his insurance dual requirements. It had been a while since I was in a pa-23 so after our briefing, I spent my time in the POH after doing a walk around of the airplane and looking it over "mechanically". Real nice with a pair of 600 hour engines and well taken care of. As I'm digging into the POH for system info and gathering up v-speeds. the owner completed his pre-flight. "We're good to go and have full tanks" Our plan was to fly about 3.5 hours and get some approaches and landings in along the California coast and come back to Sacramento. We had a great time with CAVU wx and had a great lunch. My guy flew the airplane well and was on top of things and switched tanks on schedule. I pointed out that the left fuel gauge was still showing full and we were only showing burn down of the right side. On our way back we were starting our initial descent out of 12,500' and I pointed out that we were getting low and should switch over. I was telling him that I've burned a tank dry with a student and it will get your attention when it happens. I watched him go through the tanks swap and about 9000', we had a tank go dry and the engine windmilled. I took the opportunity to push him through the engine out procedures as he didn't really do anything when the engine canned. The airplane has six tanks and after going through the procedures we were up and running. I didn't pay close attention to the fuel guages as I was talking him about the event and we then had the other engine go out from fuel starvation. At this point I took the airplane from him and told ATC we were diverting to an airport about 15 miles off the wing. I had him go through another tank swap and I never saw fuel quantity come up on the right side. I got us quickly over to the airport with 1500' over mid field and was at idle power from the Vno descent. I then bled off airspeed and did a 360 on final to kill a bit more altitude. During the approach I felt the right engine surge a bit and I had him toss the gear and flaps out and we made a landing and taxied to the pumps on both engines. I got a ladder out to peer into the tanks and the only one I could find any gas in was the outboard aux on the right wing with about 1/2" of fuel. We put 131.6 gallons into four 36 gallon tanks with three gallons unusable in each. Do the math
All you guys. Being an instructor is like living in the X-Files. TRUST NO ONE! I trusted my guy to check the tanks. It turns out, he trusted the FBO to top the tanks and didn't look. Get it? I let myself delegate an important issue one too many times without any problems.
My bads: I didn't check the tanks myself, period. I didn't take the time to be intimately familiar with the new airplane and systems BEFORE we met to fly. Another hour in the books and I wouldn't have been as distracted during the flight looking things over and playing with systems and might have paid closer attention to the one good fuel indication we had and caught how much fuel was indicated in each tank. I should have asked him point blank, how many hours of fuel do we have on board, and just how many gallons is that before we left. Come to find out he also didn't ask to fuel the aux tanks and we would have been pushing fumes if we had done much airwork.
My one good: Flying in client's aircraft can be an adventure as you learn each new model/each airplanes quirks and grow a comfort level with each one. At the first sign of something amiss in an unfamiliar airplane I took over and proceeded to get on the ground and not dork around trying to find out what happened. We would have walked away from a perfectly good airplane with no gas in it if I had messed around even a few minutes. I saw an airplane in a field 1/4 mile from the runway with the newscopter hovering just last week at the very airport we landed at. We gassed up and flew home the remaining 21nm to home.
Time to have some supper, a cold beer, and chant the old mantra: "That won't happen to me..........................again"
One of my occasional clients called me the other day saying he picked up a Turbo Aztec and still needed to do some flying after ferrying the airplane from Florida to California to satisfy his insurance dual requirements. It had been a while since I was in a pa-23 so after our briefing, I spent my time in the POH after doing a walk around of the airplane and looking it over "mechanically". Real nice with a pair of 600 hour engines and well taken care of. As I'm digging into the POH for system info and gathering up v-speeds. the owner completed his pre-flight. "We're good to go and have full tanks" Our plan was to fly about 3.5 hours and get some approaches and landings in along the California coast and come back to Sacramento. We had a great time with CAVU wx and had a great lunch. My guy flew the airplane well and was on top of things and switched tanks on schedule. I pointed out that the left fuel gauge was still showing full and we were only showing burn down of the right side. On our way back we were starting our initial descent out of 12,500' and I pointed out that we were getting low and should switch over. I was telling him that I've burned a tank dry with a student and it will get your attention when it happens. I watched him go through the tanks swap and about 9000', we had a tank go dry and the engine windmilled. I took the opportunity to push him through the engine out procedures as he didn't really do anything when the engine canned. The airplane has six tanks and after going through the procedures we were up and running. I didn't pay close attention to the fuel guages as I was talking him about the event and we then had the other engine go out from fuel starvation. At this point I took the airplane from him and told ATC we were diverting to an airport about 15 miles off the wing. I had him go through another tank swap and I never saw fuel quantity come up on the right side. I got us quickly over to the airport with 1500' over mid field and was at idle power from the Vno descent. I then bled off airspeed and did a 360 on final to kill a bit more altitude. During the approach I felt the right engine surge a bit and I had him toss the gear and flaps out and we made a landing and taxied to the pumps on both engines. I got a ladder out to peer into the tanks and the only one I could find any gas in was the outboard aux on the right wing with about 1/2" of fuel. We put 131.6 gallons into four 36 gallon tanks with three gallons unusable in each. Do the math
All you guys. Being an instructor is like living in the X-Files. TRUST NO ONE! I trusted my guy to check the tanks. It turns out, he trusted the FBO to top the tanks and didn't look. Get it? I let myself delegate an important issue one too many times without any problems.
My bads: I didn't check the tanks myself, period. I didn't take the time to be intimately familiar with the new airplane and systems BEFORE we met to fly. Another hour in the books and I wouldn't have been as distracted during the flight looking things over and playing with systems and might have paid closer attention to the one good fuel indication we had and caught how much fuel was indicated in each tank. I should have asked him point blank, how many hours of fuel do we have on board, and just how many gallons is that before we left. Come to find out he also didn't ask to fuel the aux tanks and we would have been pushing fumes if we had done much airwork.
My one good: Flying in client's aircraft can be an adventure as you learn each new model/each airplanes quirks and grow a comfort level with each one. At the first sign of something amiss in an unfamiliar airplane I took over and proceeded to get on the ground and not dork around trying to find out what happened. We would have walked away from a perfectly good airplane with no gas in it if I had messed around even a few minutes. I saw an airplane in a field 1/4 mile from the runway with the newscopter hovering just last week at the very airport we landed at. We gassed up and flew home the remaining 21nm to home.
Time to have some supper, a cold beer, and chant the old mantra: "That won't happen to me..........................again"
