Posted on 01/27/2015 5:18:11 AM PST by navysealdad
The pilot of a single engine Cirrus SR-22 aircraft that ran out of fuel is safe after ditching his aircraft 253 miles northeast of Maui, Hawaii Sunday.
(Excerpt) Read more at zanylol.com ...
Dummy.
Seems like 95% of these small plane crashes are always caused by running out of gas because pilots are nit careful enough about calculating their fuel needs for a given flight.
I’d say he is a (lucky) candidate for remedial math, given that he ran out of fuel some 200+ miles from his destination.
So who was doing the filming?
That was cool. Does that system have a release for the chute after it hits the water? And who picked him up? The cruse ship or the CG?
Coast Guard C-130
I was picked up one day by a pilot who worked for this fast food chain owner who wanted me to evaluate his ranching practices.
He pointed out the lever when I got in the plane that deploys the chute and instructed me how to do it should something happen to him.
Expensive plane for its size.... something like 300K if my memory serves me.
“Ditching” implies some kind of control. This was more like a “splashdown,” I think.
That is AMAZING footage.
News report this morning on TV said he had fuel in the tank but it was not getting to the engine.
“Expensive plane for its size.... something like 300K...”
GA is expensive - 300K is nothing. Government regulations and insurance...
I’m downsizing from my twin to a single and the new (used) single aircraft is a helluva a lot more than the cost of that aircraft with the same seating capacity.
It’s 2400 miles from San Diego to Hilo Hawaii.
2200 Miles just puts you far from anything.
You gotta wonder how, after 1100 miles, it was not clear to the pilot that he only had 1100 miles worth of fuel left, and it would be a good idea to fly with the wind back to San Diego.
Oh, OK.
For a flight like this, the plane would be equipped with ferry tanks inside the cabin, that pump to the main fuel tanks as needed. Lots of things to go wrong with a temporary system like that. Every component is mission critical.
Given that the internal fuel of the Cirrus 22 is less than half of what is needed for the flight, it would have been impossible to transfer all of the fuel completely out of the ferry tanks before hitting the halfway mark. That could leave you, at some point, without enough fuel to reach land and no way to get the rest of the fuel out of the temporary bladders.
Bummer...
Oops.
Another nice artificial reef!
You're gonna need a bigger raft.
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