Trust No One!

[acaTerry]

I don't want to sound harsh but I have to. You have 3500 hours and still have not learned to check the fuel yourself. As CFI you have to do this, you are in command.
I normally hold my judgements but in this case I have to shake my head. Even when I was a 350 hour CFI, I always checked fuel and oil myself no matter who I flew with or how short we'd be flying. It takes less than 2 minutes. Sorry, but I can't help but feel despair that CFIs are out there being so foolish.

 

[VW Pilot]

RE: Say Again Over....OOOOPs....Sorry.

 

[Goose Egg]

Lesson learned for me. I haven't done too well at double-checking the fuel and oil when my students do the preflight. I haven't been burned, but I'm starting to get the feeling I've been extremely lucky.

-Goose

 

[avbug]

When I was instructing full time, a student crumpled an airplane. I picked up the airplane at the repair station a couple of months later. It was waiting just outside the door to their shop. One of the inspectors told me he'd flown it the night before, that it flew nicely, and that it was ready to go.

As I preflighted it, I found right away that all the inspection plates on the underside of the airplane were missing. Having attended to that, I began again, and quickly invited the inspector out to look at the airplane. Had he by chance noticed that the AILERONS WERE RIGGED BACKWARDS during his little flight the night before? Nope, he hadn't...nor could he explain why the fuel tanks were completely dry, the flaps misrigged, etc.

Over the years I've seen shop owners, aircraft owners, students, and pilots put aircraft on the line without fuel, with cracked wings, with broken spars, with bent or damged landing gear, firewalls, cracked or broken tailwheel stingers, misrigged flight controls, misrigged engine controls, and a host of other problems. I flew a corporate airplane to the Bahamas, one of thirty or so the company owned. When I went to fire up, the engine temps went through the roof. After a second start attempt with the same results, I called the DoM, who told me the airplane had been doing it for months. He told me the engine manufacturer had approved it. I called the engine manufacturer, who responded with shock. Nobody called them. The company just lied.

Trust will get you killed.

 

[pilotpat]

Oh, yeah...abnormally high ITT's are fine! As the Caveman on the Geico commercial says, "Yeah, I got a response....w-w-what?"

 

[Sam Snead]

The 'big boys' never 'visually' check the fuel tanks, they have gauges they trust. When you go from flying an airplane like that to a small piston, your habit patterns are not in place.

That goes for a bunch of stuff, not just checking fuel level at preflight. I'm glad that this particular lesson was learned for free.

 

[avbug]

I jumped in a small piston twin a few days ago, for the first time in years. The first thing I did on the walk around was check the fuel and oil, even though two others had already done it.

I don't think preflight habits die at all. Nor do I think one believes the Seminole or Seneca one walks up to is a B737...not do I think experience in advanced aircraft alleviates the use of the checklist, nor teaches one not to use it.

You do still have a preflight checklist, no?

 

[nosehair]

I don't think preflight habits die at all. Nor do I think one believes the Seminole or Seneca one walks up to is a B737...

I think I would think the same, given the fact that we spent some time on the line in small piston airplanes before going from flight school to FO in short time. Most all the militay jet pilots started in pistons, but if there is no appreciable after school experience with small pistons, I think the experience just dies away. That's my observation of the bulk of heavy airplane drivers.

 

[Amish RakeFight]

When I used to freelance instruct in some Dr.'s Mooney, I'd feel pretty uneasy when the pilot told me were good on fuel and that we could top off at XYZ for better rates. I couldn't climb in without having a peek myself and thinking hard about endurance to said airport.

 

[FlySacto]

The 'big boys' never 'visually' check the fuel tanks, they have gauges they trust. When you go from flying an airplane like that to a small piston, your habit patterns are not in place.

That goes for a bunch of stuff, not just checking fuel level at preflight. I'm glad that this particular lesson was learned for free.

Thanks all of you guys for the positive, and also the scalding comments. I had a situation where 25+years of combined flying experience almost screwed the pooch. Sam, your post brings up two good points for me to comment on. As the level of experience goes up we (do, might, should, shouldn't) put more trust in our fellow pilot to complete a task as simple as verifying the fuel load. My begining instrument students get more of a "grilling" about the flight than someone doing recurent training and have been flying for years. This includes the preflight planning, fuel requirements, ect. I was comfortable that an experienced pilot finally moving up to a high performance twin was up to the task. He wasn't.

Today with the airline, I got an airplane that had several MEL's. One of them was a fuel quantity indicator that was defered and required that the fuel quantity in that wing be verified after each refueling with several float indicators built into the wing, and the quantity computed with a chart. As a Captain should I have trusted in and let the relativly new FO to do the test, or should have I done it myself? Do I most likely delay all the flights with tight turns to do the test and have the confidence that it was done correctly, or do I trust my fellow pilot and try to get out on time? What is the definitive right answer? More food for thought....