Click Here to Return to

Fuel...or not to fuel. The decision making process, chain of events-being conscious about each every decision. "Better to be on the ground wishing you were in the air than in the air wishing you were on the ground."
Any other stories out there?

this is why we plan with reserves. good call sir.

flying with partial fuel makes XC fun like this. right now im flying 150s with students which means we have half or 3/4 fuel, depending on how big the student is. so we have about an hour or a little more of endurance for XC flying before we need gas.

see you next weekend

_________________
Everyone must believe in something, I believe that I will go flying.

Clearly Jason made the right choice for the situation. I think the broader issue here (at least from my perspective) is how experience and familiarity can lead to the such a question even being asked.

I understand that for weight purposes, the original flight was made with just enough fuel to handle reserves. But as a fairly new pilot that's having fun tooling around in my Piper Warrior, I can say that I start to get very sweaty when I have anything less than TWO HOURS left in my tanks.

Seriously, my plane is generally rated at 5.5 hours of capacity at economy-cruise, and I measure my hours vs. fuel use at every fillup. I have yet to put more than 34 gallons in, which is about 3.5 hours of flight time. I know I could go more, just not comfortable doing so.

I suppose as I gain experience, there will be that one time where conditions are fine and the risk of extending that extra hour will be acceptable. But one of my favorite sayings generally holds true: the only time you can have too much fuel is when you're on fire!