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Fuel starvation – myths and reality

This is a guest post by Jason Schappert from the highly recommended M0A blog.

“Aviation officials say there’s a simple way to prevent hundreds of small plane crashes: fill up the gas tank.”

This is the statement I woke up to in my RSS reader the other morning. It’s this very “compelling” statement that has caught the eye and ear of many major newspapers and newscasts.

For some of us general aviation maybe a hobby for others it maybe a career. I can effectively speak for both departments. Regardless of our purpose in aviation we all have to do our part to shed the real light on general aviation.

I’m a huge advocate for general aviation and to see articles like this with headlines like above breaks my heart. It’s our job as pilots to conduct a proper preflight, calculate fuel burn, weight and balance etc…

However let’s defend our position. The very next line in that report states: “The National Transportation Safety Board says running out of fuel has been a cause or factor in 238 small plane crashes in the past five years.”

After some quick research I found that in 2008 alone there were over 26 million hours flown! That’s in 2008 alone. So assuming these “5 years” the article refers to the yearly hours flown would be quite similar.

In other words out of an estimated 125 million hours flown there were 238 crashes related to fuel exhaustion. That’s less than .1%!

Yet there are two sides to every story. Yes, fuel starvation related accidents are low. However couldn’t they be lower? What can we do to prevent them. After looking over several NTSB reports related to this topic they all end with “The loss of engine power due to fuel starvation as a result of the pilot’s failure to manage and monitor fuel usage.” Or something to that nature.

Pilots don’t go flying expecting to run out of fuel. Fuel management is the most preventable general aviation accident yet still year after year a handful of pilots turn their aircraft into impromptu gliders!

This situation won’t be solved by simply saying. “only leave the ground with full tanks” because we know that’s not possible. Rarely can I take a student, myself, full fuel, and flight bags on a flight in my little 150. It’s just not safe.

How do I avoid this problem, while still staying within my weight limits? I plan. Before each flight I say: “Okay, this will be an hour long instructional flight my 150 burns 4.5 gph during flight instruction. However I’d rather be safe and call it 6. During my instruction flights I require my students to have an hour reserve. (although the FAA only requires 30 mins) So we’ll tack on an additional 6 gallons. (Again rounding high). It looks like there is some weather to our south so just to be safe let’s add another 45 minutes and make sure we’re within our weight and CG limits.”

That is a typical conversation in the hanger while preflighting. Shouldn’t you be thinking of these things? Yes the FAA says 30 minutes additional fuel for VFR day. But why not tighten the rules? Why do just enough to get by?

My friends aviation is a wonderful thing, let’s defend it and stick up for it. We’ll always have nay-sayers. Be safe, fly your best, and remember, a good pilot is always learning.

Four checkrides in one

Checkrides happen. It’s an inevitable part of being a pilot. But knowing that doesn’t make them easier or more fun. On Saturday, I had to do four:

JAR Single Engine Piston rating renewal. Somehow, stupidly, I had let this lapse. I can still fly N-reg aircraft on my FAA CPL but I like to keep all my ratings current so I decided to renew it.
JAR IMC rating. This rating lets me fly G-reg aircraft in clouds in the UK. It has to be renewed with a flight test every couple of years and my rating was due to expire later this year but it made sense to renew it now because it doubles up with some of the FAA tests.
FAA Instrument Proficiency Check. You can keep an FAA instrument rating current by performing six approaches, some holds and some tracking in actual IMC (or under the hood or in a sim) within the past six months. However, this is a pretty low standard of currency. You could fly them all in January and then do nothing until July. I don’t think you’d be very current at the end of it. My preference is to fly with an instructor or do an IPC every three to six months. That way I know I’m legal and current.
FAA Biannual Flight Review. I passed my CPL in October 2007 so I didn’t need to do a BFR until later this year but it seemed to make sense to wrap it up with the other stuff because so much of it overlaps.

So off I went with John Page from TAA UK in N147GT to do some holds, tracking and approaches at Southend. The sneaky so-and-so had fixed it with the controllers to switch of the glideslope on my second approach so I had to revert to a localiser-only approach. It wasn’t elegant at first as I had to check the plate for the heights and so on but I made a good recovery and would have landed safely.

This is why I prefer doing checkrides with instructors because you learn something each time. Left to my own devices, I would have done a radar-vectored, auto-coupled ILS approaches and it would have been a cake walk.

Then we went off to the local area for the dreaded compass turns. I can master computers and GPS systems with manuals 500 pages thick. But a simple magnetic compass, a stopwatch and some schoolboy maths does my head in every time. Then some other VFR SEP/BFR type stuff: practice forced landings, stalls, steep turns etc.

After that, recovery from unusual attitudes. With foggles. On the back up instruments. In turbulence. My gyros toppled completely and I was nearly sick but this is good practice. It was a pleasure to get the circuit portion of the checkride over and land after nearly two hours aloft.

Then the paperwork. As Wernher von Braun said “Going to the moon is easy but the paperwork is very difficult.” (His biography was called “I aim for the stars” but some wag suggested that the subtitle should be “…but sometimes I hit London.”) Anyway, I’m back on the top line now and good to fly.

Sporty’s new G1000 training course

In case you are still flying a traditional aircraft and our planning to make the transition to a glass cockpit, Sporty’s has just released the new Garmin G1000 Checkout for a retail price of US$89.95. The package includes a two disc DVD training video that runs for 107 minutes (hosted by air show announcer Rob Reider who has narrated other videos for Sporty’s), G1000 PC Software Simulator, syllabus and cockpit poster and according to the company website, the course is ideal for both VFR and IFR pilots or as a refresher course for current G1000 users.

Todd Macrock has already posted a short review of the Garmin G1000 Checkout on MyFlightBlog.com and he states that he preferred this product over another one by Sporty’s that he recently reviewed (Sporty’s Air Facts: Flying Glass Cockpits). He also points out that the Garmin G1000 Checkout contains some great scenario-based training.

So if you are already a fan of some of Sporty’s other training products, then the Garmin G1000 Checkout might be worth checking out.

Flow charts as checklists

The importance of having and following checklists as a pilot cannot be emphasized enough. However, a written checklist is not always the easiest tool to use or memorize if you are more of a visual person and have difficulty with translating the written checklist into a set of actions in the cockpit. In such cases, a visual image in the form of a flow pattern or flow chart would be of great assistance to help memorize all the required actions or steps.

Hence, Vincent of Plastic Pilot has recently posted a detailed entry about the subject of flow charts or patterns in general and his entry includes two sample flow charts while Sam of Blogging at FL250 (who is also a regional airline pilot) covered the topic in an entry back in 2007. His blog entry also includes a sample Before Start flow chart that he put together for the Cessna 150.

Oddly however, although there are plenty of sample checklists for aircraft available on the internet, a quick google search for flow charts does not come up with many such examples other than what Vincent and Sam have done. However, having a simple photographic printout of your cockpit will allow you to create your own flow chart for whatever checklist you deem a visual aide would be of great assistance to help you memorize it.

What I learned from my CPL

I have an FAA Commercial Pilot’s Licence. I took the exam in 2007 and I wrote an article about the challenges involved. But I never wrote about why I did it. So this article is an attempt to explain what I learned and how it helped me.

Let me make one thing clear. I did *not* do it because I want to be a commercial pilot.

Most American pilots take the PPL, then an instrument rating and then do the CPL. After that if they carry on in the aviation industry they do their ATPL as on-the-job training. The situation is different in Europe where most commercial pilots do a long ATPL course before starting their paid flying career. The American system is admirable because it encourages pilots to keep improving their skills. This was my main motivation.

So this is what I learned:

Improved visual flying skills. My instrument rating training had my working very hard to fly very smoothly and improve my procedural skills. The CPL takes you back to your PPL VFR skills and improves them. Manoeuvres like very steep turns, lazy eights, chandelles and eights on a pylon helped me to polish hand flying skills. And they’re fun too. The standard for the CPL is much higher than for the PPL and so you learn that you can fly the plane with much greater precision.
Better landings. At first my landings were dreadful in the Arrow but the CPL sets a very high standard for accurate landings. You need to be able to put it within 50 feet or so of your designated landing spot and it also calls for skill with short-field and soft-field landings. By the time I had finished, I had done hundreds of them and I was very, very good at landings. It’s good to know that I can reach that standard even if the precision has worn off a little since then through lack of regular practice.
Night flying. I do very little night flying in the UK because my home airfield shuts at night. So it was good to do lots of night landings and some VFR night navigation.
Retractable gear and variable pitch prop. Although the SR22 has a VP prop, it only has one lever in the cockpit – the prop and throttle are interlinked. And, of course, it is a fixed-gear aircraft. You have to do part of the CPL in a ‘complex’ aircraft with VP prop and retractable landing gear. These extra things to think about actually forced me to work much harder on my checklists and in-flight procedures so that they were fluent. This is a useful skill to have and I’ve changed the way I use checklists and flow checks in the Cirrus as a result.
Studying the plane. My instructor made me learn everything about the Arrow – all the systems and POH information. This helped me in the Oral exam but also, I think, helped me fly better. It also helped when the plane broke down. For example, the engine wouldn’t start one day, the gear lights didn’t illuminate once etc. etc. Knowing the systems and the procedures helped turn these things into manageable problems. When I got back, I went to our maintenance company and spent a few hours with a mechanic going over the SR-22 in similar detail. I recommend it.
Learning a new plane. It’s good to fly different types of aircraft. Especially when the Cirrus lulls you into a (false) sense of security. It’s just too easy to fly. Also the Arrow I flew in Florida for my training had a dodgy radio, one intermittent VOR and no GPS or autopilot. It’s good to see what happens when you don’t have all your toys. I coped surprisingly well without a TV screen in the cockpit too!
Oral exams are nothing to fear. I had an excellent examiner in Janeen Kolchan and I think that all my study and revision meant that the CPL oral was not the torment that my IR oral exam had been. It’s good to learn that you can overcome your fear by hard work.
Looking after passengers. Unsurprisingly, the CPL is about preparing you to fly people for money. There is more emphasis on safety, decision-making and passenger management. The CPL encourages you to take responsibility. For example, there’s a lot of emphasis on when flights are legal or not and what your responsibilities as a pilot are. This is good stuff. We all fly with friends and family and we owe them the best duty of care we can give. The CPL is one way to enhance that.
Consistency. I think that the single most important lesson of the CPL is the importance of consistency. Consistent checks, consistent application of procedures, consistent handling, consistent landings etc. It’s about flying in a professional way and that, I think, is the basis for safe flying.

The course isn’t particularly long or difficult. Allow two weeks and go to a good school with good instructors and aircraft and you’ll come back a better pilot.