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Wednesday, October 21, 2015

100% of Aircraft that Suffer Fuel Related Accidents have Non-Functional Fuel Gauges


That's a pretty bold statement.  


While the FAA and NTSB do not as a rule, evaluate or test the fuel quantity system in the fuel starved aircraft the same is not true for other national safety boards or aircraft regulatory agencies. 

These foriegn agencies and boards have determined that fuel indication plays a large part in fuel related accidents.

In fact these agencies and boards have petitioned our FAA to issue guidance or an Airworthiness Directive on the fuel quantity systems that they found to be less than functional.  

It is unfortunate - but in the aviation world we need to describe what a functional fuel gauge is.

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A Functional Aircraft Fuel Gauge has the following two Characteristics

  • In level flight the indicated amount of fuel shown on the gauge should be within 3% of actual fuel volume in the tank.  
  • When the fuel is at a low level demonstrated to the FAA to be the minimum fuel that can be drawn from the aircraft in all normal maneuvering flight conditions this demonstrated fuel quantity will be the "Zero" or "Empty" fuel level value.
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For reasons that we have discussed in this blog  - there are reasons and a history for why we in the aviation community treat the required instrumentation for fuel quantity different than all other required instrumentation on the on the aircraft.  

When you take a step back and look at it the context of what aircraft fuel level indication should be vs. what it is or what it has become.

There is room for improvement,  but most pilots believe that fuel indication will never change and they definitely won't rely on it.


Let's make aircraft fuel level indication functional to the two characteristics indicated above and use them to provide adequate warning of unplanned fuel usage or fuel loss.  


With this vital information available to pilots for actual fuel quantity in the tanks, pilots will make better decisions.

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