MattyT Posted May 20, 2009 Posted May 20, 2009 Airman Spots Jetliner’s Fuel Leak At 35,000 Feet http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/05/airma...-at-35000-feet/ Probably saved 300 people.
erynthered Posted May 20, 2009 Posted May 20, 2009 Nice story. I wonder if the plane has an extended warranty.
Chef Jim Posted May 20, 2009 Posted May 20, 2009 How could the pilots not know they were using 6,000 pounds of fuel an hour more than they were supposed to be?
MattyT Posted May 20, 2009 Author Posted May 20, 2009 How could the pilots not know they were using 6,000 pounds of fuel an hour more than they were supposed to be? I guess the Check Engine dummy light never came on.
Quester74 Posted May 20, 2009 Posted May 20, 2009 He waited an hour to tell someone? Well, at 6,000 lbs. an hour.. they are only losing 100 lbs. a minute.. probably takes a significant amount of time to notice a drastic difference in fuel consumption (although, I haven't the foggiest idea how much fuel one of these bad boys consumes). Still, I see your point.. Maybe the guy, having experience with large jet planes, had a decent idea of the aircrafts fuel consumption, and might explain why he waited until the flight was going to go oceanic. Who knows.
DC Tom Posted May 20, 2009 Posted May 20, 2009 How could the pilots not know they were using 6,000 pounds of fuel an hour more than they were supposed to be? 6000 pounds of jet fuel is about 1000 gallons. A 777 carries between 35000 and 50000 (depending on the model) gallons; a 747, 30k-60k gallons. So the difference they were looking at was about 2-3% of their total fuel capacity per hour. Of course, on a per-hour basis, that's maybe a 30% discrepancy in usage. And according to the article, they did notice it, they just didn't know why it was happening.
Chef Jim Posted May 20, 2009 Posted May 20, 2009 6000 pounds of jet fuel is about 1000 gallons. A 777 carries between 35000 and 50000 (depending on the model) gallons; a 747, 30k-60k gallons. So the difference they were looking at was about 2-3% of their total fuel capacity per hour. Of course, on a per-hour basis, that's maybe a 30% discrepancy in usage. And according to the article, they did notice it, they just didn't know why it was happening. I didn't read the article that was linked until just know. It didn't mention that they were aware of the discrepancy in the first article.
Acantha Posted May 20, 2009 Posted May 20, 2009 Airman Spots Jetliner’s Fuel Leak At 35,000 Feet http://www.wired.com/autopia/2009/05/airma...-at-35000-feet/ Probably saved 300 people. Good on him, but it's far from likely the plane would have crashed due to this. It's not like once the plane was over ocean they were all screwed. It wasn't Japan or bust.
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