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Posted
read about the Gimli glider, this sort of mistake brought then down.

I thought they stuffed up pounds to kilos? But I could be thinking of another incident.

 

 

  • Agree 4
Posted

yeah they did, but the key, critical error was that they used 1.77 as the factor for converting a liter of fuel to weight. A liter of fuel weighs 0.83 kg, and 1.77 lbs. They should have used 0.83. They took off with 0.83/1.77 of the amount of fuel they thought they had.

 

Everyone says these guys were hero pilots, but I've always thought they were utter nitwits. If they'd paid the slightest attention in school chemistry, or even if they had any common sense, they would have exclaimed:

 

"1.77! that can't be right: fuel floats on water, everyone knows that! Water has a density of 1, so fuel can't be more than 1."

 

and the accident wouldn't have happened. But the significance of a density of 1.77 never occurred to these highly-trained aviators until they heard the all engines out warning sound.

 

 

Posted
read about the Gimli glider, this sort of mistake brought then down.

That's an interesting read.

 

Something jumped out at me though... it was a 767 with 61 passengers on board. The required fuel load was 22,000kg (22 tonnes).

 

That's about 1/3 of a tonne of fuel per passenger, or about 365kg to be exact. To fly around 3600km. So that's around 1kg of fuel (bit over a litre) per 10km, per passenger.

 

Makes it a bit hard to believe Jetstar when they say a $2 donation will offset the carbon from your flight....

 

 

  • Agree 1
Posted

It was thankfully not very full.

 

The seating arrangements can vary, but still it is capable of carrying far more passengers than that.

 

 

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