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That's not a great story, that's sh-tty piloting. |
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Ok.. first off, you weren't their for any of the flight. And yes, we (2 pilot crew, me as FO) should have made an announcement sooner about the issue (which ended up being a mx issue caused b/c of the fuel transfer system being inop and the test procedure not testing all of the components in the system). yall are acting like you've never done anything stupid or could have done something better. Dont give me that BS, b/c their is always something in aviation as pilots that you could of done better. And until you find yourself in a situation such as this, you dont know how your going to react. The way our fuel transfer system works, is it only tells you when its NOT transferring the last 28 gallons of fuel from the inboard wing tank to the main nacalle tank. Well, when the test procedure only tests the fuel pump and pressure switch all you know is that the pump and pressure switch as working. It doesn't test the transfer system fuel probe which tells the transfer pump when to turn on and off. So to add more fuel to the fire for you guys i'll go more into detail on the flight...
As we reached about the Jax area of florida our "no fuel transfer" light Illuminated on the right side. We took this as we had a slight fuel imbalance (as the gauges were showing more fuel on the left side as well, more on this later). After checking the gauges, our times, the fuel flows (left engine was burning approx. 50lbs/hour less than the right) we decided to activate the fuel crossfeed function until the "no fuel transfer" light illuminated on the left side telling us that our fuel imbalance was now corrected (remember during the pre-flight the transfer system checked good). Well after 20 minutes (now i believe we were just south of cocoa beach area) we started to get "moved" around by atc. During all of this, they tried 3 times to divert us over 100miles out of the way b/c of "weather" at our altitude, but yet they wouldn't let us climb nor descend (yet). anyways, approx. 30-40 minutes of getting delayed by atc and them attempting to re-route us we both had forgotten we were still on cross-feed and about that time i mentioned that it had been "a long time" since we initiated manual cross-feed and the light had still not illuminated and i thought we should go back to normal, as something didn't seem right. About 10-20 minutes after that i believe is when the left engine flamed out.
The following day, we began troubleshooting (we are both A&P's as well) the issue of why we still had the 28gallons of use-able fuel left in the left inboard wing tank (wing tanks are aux's and nacalle's are our mains), since the transfer system tested fine before the flight and AFTER the flight. Long story short, after about 5 hours, we came to the conclusion that the fuel transfer system probe was defective and was not telling the fuel transfer pump to come on when the nacalle tanks reached 10gallons low. Once we installed the new probe, the transfer pump began pumping our 28 gallons into the nacalle tanks like it should.
So yea, there are things we could and should of done different, but the long day (it was going on 14+ hours for both of us) along with the atc delays, weather, etc. all played a factor in us getting side tracked. Granted, i can probly gaurantee none of yall would do the jobs we do for what little we get payed for.
and yea I "do" get it. but it is still IMO that miami center doesn't give a **** about you unless your a jet.