One of the things that I found fascinating was how the fuel gets to the airports. There are only a few countries that move it around on trains or in tanker trucks. For example in the UK the fuel for all major airports and medium sized ones and a surprising amount of small ones are all from a network of fuel pipes originally put in, in WWII. A late war Avro Lancaster on a maximum range sortie would carry roughly 4 tonnes of fuel. In a 1000 bomber raid that's going to be more than could be handled by the roads of the era and you really do not want that much potentially visible to the enemy (in terms of fuel trucks moving about). Therefore the pipelines were built in secret so the Germans would not know we had it and therefore may not expect a bombing raid as they would not see major fuel movement. I believe they also go to modern RAF bases as well. I have heard rumours that they were even maintained on the disused dispersal airfields from WWII in the cold war. I know for a fact that there were at least two WWII dispersal fields in Bedfordshire about half way between Bedford and Kimbolton on the B660 in remarkably good condition in the 1970's.
When I was coming back from a deployment in the 90s, the 727 charter flight my unit was on had to stop at a small airport in Southern Mexico to refuel. I remember watching the captain take out a big blue bank bag and count out a huge stack of cash to the refueler before he would hook up the lines.
As a former Fuel-Operator, I'd like to add a few points: The fuel is always filtered by dispenser trucks (and many times more in underfloor systems) or fuel trucks. Water is separated and a visible check is alway performed. Density / temperature is another important thing. Don't forget that there are several different Kerosin specifications. In Europe, mostly Jet A1 is available, North America is Jet A1. The SR71 Blackbird has its own Kerosine specification.. funny. You didn't mention the remaining fuel thats obligated by FAA. BtW. most Fuelers around the globe prefer Boings to Airbus to refill because of the fact, that it's more a manual process. The worst on is the A330, it's a diva to refill.
Episode suggestion for the captain: maintenance schedules for various systems on the 737, engines, instruments, gear, airframe. I'm sure its pretty complex. Also unscheduled maintenance and proceedure for pulling an aircraft from service.
As I watch your channel, I'm learning how difficult and challenging its to fly an aircraft and how many variables and unknowable can cause trouble to the pilots
As l have said elsewhere you're a great narrator and you would be an excellent flying instructor. You know your subject well and you convey the information to your listeners in such way that everyone understands. Always a great pleasure to see / listen to your videos! Many thanks from Down Under!
"So let's say it's two hours. That's about a hundred and twenty minutes." (pause. alarm bell... you can't leave it like that...) "That's EXACTLY a hundred and twenty minutes." This is why I would fly with this guy!
@@steveallen1340 cuz the American built plane has a 1000lbs imbalance rating. A nice round number, not so much when flying in Europe where the metric system is universally used.
I remember back in early 90s when me and my brother were kids and took trips from Usa to Europe, I used to ask the stewardess if I could see the cockpit and she said sure I’ll come back for you later. She took me and my brother to the cockpit and we were over the Atlantic in a 747, I asked what would happen if a motor went out? The captain reached over and shut down a engine and asked did you feel anything? I have to be honest not really. We went back to our seats and told our parents... they freaked out and called us crazy. Lol those were the days
Yeah same here ... we could once fly the plane =D and I also remember that we once also was allowed to breath threw there oxygen masks they showed everything, that was pretty awesome ... Good old times... or also we came in a 767 from NY to Berlin ... it was heavy raining in Berlin and that’s why heavy traffic over Berlin ... and the pilot spends a 1/2 hour over Paris and showed the left and right side the beautiful city ... and made a city tour with us to not waste time over Berlin ...
About aircraft efficiency, you have to remember what @WendoverProductions said: "The Airbus A320neo can carry 6400 gallons (24200 litres) of fuel - that is the equivalent of 376 fully fuelled Toyota Camrys. For every mile (1.6km) the A320neo flies, it burns 1.5 gallons (5.68 litres) of jet fuel - that works out to a paltry .67mpg (350L/100km). That A320 could just barely fly from the Empire State Building to the Grand Central Terminal on that gallon of fuel, to fly that 213mi (355km) from New York to D.C., that A320 needs 317 gallons (1200l) of fuel. With that much fuel, our Camry could drive from New York to L.A. 49 times, but we have to consider that the Camry only seats 5. The A320 seats 154. So, assuming fully loaded, it has a per person fuel efficiency of 104.7mpg (2.25l/100km)."
I saw a doc about a day in the life of American Airlines. They followed one specific flight then calculated the airline's profit on that flight after everything was paid out and it was $18.00. That's eighteen dollars. Wow!
This was an absolutely fantastic video, whether you are interested in commercial aircraft, airline economics, investing in airline companies or airline fuel providers! Very, very well done! Thank you!
In 1997 I was flying from Reno to Chicago nonstop on a MD-80. I happened to be flying 1st class (business trip) and before 911 the cockpit door was always open... After taking off (almost immediately) the pilot came on the PA saying we were going to have to land in Salt Lake City to refuel because our takeoff weight was heavy... Apparently there was a major bowling tournament in Reno and they underestimated weight not realizing the amount of Bowling balls the aircraft had onboard. (That's what he said) We landed in SLC and were on the ground, for an hour or so, while they added fuel. The fuel man came aboard and I watched the Pilot give him a credit card to pay for the fuel. Thought this was the weirdest thing I ever saw. Ended up getting pretty drunk (1st class), we took off again and eventually arrived in Chicago, I missed my connection. lol
The cockpit door wouldn't have been open in flight. It still would have been closed and locked, the difference is that the doors weren't reinforced and there weren't any locked door policy. Which is why 911 occured.
@@EinkOLED Sorry, I will not argue about this, but I flew business over the continental U.S. very regular in the 80's and 90's. The cockpit door was open the whole flight very often... I remember landing many a time looking down at the runway in an aisle seat. It's the way it was.
@@MentourPilot Hi Peter! How are you my friend? So I have a question! So what are the names of the companies that provide jet fuel? Is it the same companies like here in the US/Canada, companies we use for gas in our cars like Chevron, Shell, ExxonMobil BP, Texaco, Arco, etc.? Are there different brands that you can choose from in each airport? What about things like oil or other fluids/lubricants? Does Jerry fuel have various octanes (like do you have a choice like we do with cars? for example 87/89/93 octane) is there diesel options for airplanes? Sorry if these sound like stupid questions but I'm just really curious!!! Thanks Peter! We love you buddy! -Bobby in Los Angeles PS: A little about me, I'm Bobby, I'm 40 and live in LA, I'm legally blind in one eye and totally blind in the other and have had 17 eye surgeries (when I was in my preteen years). I'm very lucky that I can see out of one eye and have just enough vision to get by, I live a pretty normal life but I can't drive a car (maybe one day). My dream is always been to fly an airplane! I am an accomplished pianist and have traveled the world so I'm doing ok :-)
Since you haven't mentioned any, I collected some accidents and incidents involving fuel and the fueling system. These were all covered by Mayday/Air Crash Investigators. - Air Transat Flight 236, diverted to the Azores after gliding 65nm because ran out of fuel due to a fuel leak - Air Canada Flight 143 (Gimli Glider), diverted to Gimli after running out of fuel due to taking less fuel than needed during the last refueling because of a conversion error and a broken fuel guage - British Airtours Flight 28M, caught fire in Manchester after a combustor ruptured in the left engine and punctured the fuel tank in the wing - Tuninter Flight 1153, crashed into the Mediterranean Sea after running out of fuel due to taking less fuel than needed during the last refueling because of a wrong fuel guage installed on the aircraft - British Airways Flight 38, crashed short of the runway at Heathrow after suffering from engines control problems due to the heat exchanger clogged by ice accumulating in the fuel lines - Air France Flight 4590 (Concorde), crashed after taking off in Paris after a piece of metal hit and ruptured one of its fuel tanks that caused a fire and engine failure - China Airlines Flight 120, caught fire in Okinawa after a loose bolt punctured the right wing fuel tank - Cathay Pacific Flight 780, made an emergency landing in Hong Kong after suffering from engine control problems due to fuel contaminated by SAP spheres used by ground equipment Unfortunately there were quite a few accidents where the aircraft ran out of fuel due to some other, non-fuel related reason. I didn't include them because this list would be a lot longer.
There were also a couple of incidents on 747's where the belly tank fuel pumps overheated due to a manufacturing error where a wire was pinched inside. Crane Aerospace solved that issue by X-raying the assembly prior to final inspection and test.
@@baksatibi I don't remember how many accidents there were but I know the problem was identified and corrected unusually quickly. The legacy pumps were left in place and they just left the belly tanks full until new pumps were available.
We're going to be visiting my mother. We're flying from Los Angeles to Pittsburgh. Now I know it will cost about $4,400 in fuel to get there. That's so unbelievable. I would never have guessed it was that much.
Some little airplane numbers: fuel capacity 225 litres (60 U.S. gallons). Aviation gasoline $CDN 1.75 a litre. Good for 7 hours in the air, 1200-ish km. In practice endurance is set by biology, if you get my drift. :-) Like most light airplanes I can have full fuel, four people in the plane, or luggage, but not all three.
It depends on your route to how much it will cost, then there are some airlines that only allow refuelling at certain airports due to cost. For example flybe refuel in Glasgow but not bhx so that route the crew fuel up for 2 sectors (there and bk) but on average it's around £13k ($16k)
As one who spent time as a Fueler at Denver Intl Airport about 20 years ago, a 737 uses about 8 lbs of fuel just to taxi to take off position. The average fuel load depended on the weight of the plane and distance of course. 737's I fueled ran about 1200-1300lbs of fuel on average- not including what was already in the tanks. A 747 I was told by those that fueled them required about 14,000 lbs on top of what was already in the tanks. Our scales measured by the pound and not be the gallon. Eight pounds are roughly 1 gallon- for water anyway. Not sure how close this is to jet fuel. Smells a lot like kerosene. Even if you get none of it on you it permeates your clothing. Trust me, there are no leaks on the flight line unless you mishandle the fuel pipe attaching it to the plane. We did have one guy fueling a 747 that spilled fuel one time (his last) and it caught fire because of the hot engines. So many people around him at the time hit the emergency shut off for the fuel supply (the trucks fueling the planes are only pump trucks- the fuel comes from the ground). Unfortunately he didn't make it.
@Pata Physics The smell goes away once you wash your clothes. Never understood how not being even close to fuel and never touching it how it could permeate the clothes, but my wife said I smelled like jet fuel every time I came home.
@Pata Physics The weight of the hose that you hook up to the aircraft. It's about 80lbs. Holding it above your head while trying to turn the lock sleeve is a bit daunting at first. The other challenging part was the low pay.
When you mentioned "you only take the amount of fuel we need + for reserve" I remember a trip from Berlin to Munich. 1h flight. About 15min from the airport we did a 180 degrees right turn and went back to Berlin. Captain announced a problem with the (weather?) Radar. In Munich at this moment was a hell of bad weather. So the airplane had twice the amount of fuel they needed.?! Makes sense regarding the price of fuel they had to take for munich - ... After arriving in Munich later I've asked a colleague about the weather, as I only saw dark clouds and wet streets He confirmed massive storm with hail.
Really love watching your videos. You really explain every bit in detail. Please make a video related with Fuel Dumping. What happens if a plane needs to make an emergency landing to a near by airport. And it still has a lot of fuel present in its tank's. Is it necessary to dump the fuel ? What's the max fuel load 737 can carry while landing ? Thanks. Love from India 🇮🇳
I remember a few years ago, a reality cable show called "Airline UK" had cameras follow the flight crews at their jobs at discount carrier EasyJet. One flight from UK to Nice, France, the plane was unable to land at Nice due to poor weather that was not improving, and the circling plane had to land at another airport due to low fuel. But it was not an airport that this airline flew to, thus had no prior arrangement with a FBO nor another airline that can service them. So the necessary fuel had to be bought and paid for on the spot. The ELF fuel truck waited on the apron, but they wouldn't take the BP fuel credit card carried by the pilot. The FBO had to negotiate directly with the president of the airline to allow the plane to be refueled and be assured that the bill would be paid for, all the while passengers waiting on the plane.
The regular guys went somewhere so we refueled a C141 on base and lox liquid oxygen. A plane landed next to us. He did a hard landing as a tire burst and we heard a loud boom. Let go of fuel hose & ducked. We thought the fuel exploded. What timing.
You answered a question I have had for a while. You make up for the extra fuel while ascending durring the descent. It is my understsnding that the lift an airplane has to keep it up requires energy use.
Just looking at this and the LaMia crash near Medellin, the report states that the crew received a low fuel warning 40 mins prior to the last FDR report, though it's not exactly clear in the report if the FDR recorded until the crash or 180nm before the RNG VOR. 40 mins prior to the crash does not give you much reserve, but 40m plus 180mn plus a couple of circuits before the actual impact is quite a bit. Obviously, it was known by the pilots that they would be on fumes by the time the landed in MDE even without the circuits in the hold. Would the minimum requirements of an alternative and a 45min hold at the alternative start to get you in a situation where the plane was telling you low fuel or would you receive the low fuel warnings after those reserves were used up?
About 3 weeks ago an A380 of BA took off from OR TAMBO in SA. The ground crew and the air crew had slipped up. They'd forgotten to remove the nose wheel pin. The nose wheel would not retract after take off. They had to fly around for 3 hours in order to burn about 120 tons of fuel before they could land again at ORT. I'm quite sure this is the only reference on the internet of that incident. I wonder what that faux pax cost BA.
12 billion dollars a year comes down to $380.52 a second, $22.83k a minute, $1.37 million an hour, or $32.877 million a day. You don't really see how crazy that truly is until you get to the hourly cost.
I flew a early Wizzair flight and they had to divert going to Budapest. I was flying the return and the pilots actually had to pay for the fuel with their credit cards because Wizzair didn't have a fueling arrangement. They weren't too happy but because of the diversion the fuel they tankered wasn't enough for minimums.
I work as an aircraft refueller somewhere in Northern Spain (one of the few airports where Ryanair does not operate, so I don't have the chance to meet you one day and say hi) and my experience is that the 737-family is one of the less comfortable planes for us to fuel. I'm talking about pressure refuelling, there are of course worse planes when talking about overwing (gravity) refuelling, like a King Air ...
I remember, short bevor the grounding of Swissair (about t he last 1-2 weeks of Swissair). The crew had to pick up suitcases with cash at the OPS Center at Zurich, so they could /had to pay the fuel, handlingagent, cabincatering in cash right on the spot at the destination.
Any chance of you integrating the new flight simulator into some potential flight education series? maybe some basic ground school, and flight planning? IFR, Airspace for the future sim guys?
40kg per MINUTE ???? Holy crap !!! My aircraft holds 45kg in total and it will fly for between 4 and 4.5 hours on that !! It will carry two people around 300 miles on full tanks. When I did my Qualifying Cross Country, the bloody landing fees cost more than the fuel to get to my land-away airport (at one of the stops). Also, I can burn mogas which is somewhat cheaper than avgas or jet A in the UK. It's not the fastest bird up there, but it's a lot of fun... and for spectacular views, you cannot beat open-cockpit !
I would really like to see Mentour do a video on fuel control systems. Proper AFR is critical in any engine, let alone that of a airliner. No doubt electronic control exists between the throttle levers and the engine itself on anything modern. Curious what actually controls it, and how it is monitored and calculated. Is it just the fuel pump pumping more for more throttle, or a valve (fuel pressure regulator), injector(s), etc? Not seeing any layman explanations that aren't overly simplified out there, and Mentour does a great job bridging the gap between layman and the hardcore science.
Aircraft as means of mass transport are very CO2 and fuel efficient. The issue comes when you get people who fly around on their own in private jets telling us we should stop flying...to save the environment...whilst they fly to environmental summits...in their private jets :P
Old pilot joke - In the future all planes will be flown by one pilot and one dog. The pilots job is to feed the dog, and the dogs job is to bite the pilot if he touches anything'
Love these more technical videos. Don’t really care whether pilots wear caps or not. 😀. An idea for a future video: are the lessons and procedures taught by Captain Warren Vanderburgh in the 1990’s, on upset recovery, still valid today.
Boeing 747 is capable of carrying roughly 500,000 pounds of fuel. Divide by 6.70, which is the mean density of jet fuel, and you get 78,300 gallons. Jet fuel averages $5.00 a gallon in the US. So that's about $390,000 for a full load of fuel.
At one time it was the case that a civilian airframe is measured in takeoff/landing cycles as these are the points where the nastiest stresses are put on the airframe it might still be the case but don't quote me on it. Cruising straight and level in still air does very little to age an airframe (metal fatigue is the main problem and that's caused by metal bending or stretching). On military jets (EG the UK Vulcan) there is a separate computer that calculates airframe life remaining dependant on take-off and landing cycles, and time at in excess of 1g (and that is mainly for flying through turbulence). The main sensor was carried in the top of the bomb bay. The Panavia Tornado had a similar system. I believe some military jets from the USA have the same. I don't believe the civilian jets need such a system as they are not cut so close to the bone for weight and are subjected to far less g's in operation (I don't know of a civilian passenger aircraft certificated for 4g for example as opposed to the 8g-9g military jets can pull). The other point for civilian jets is that their certification limits are far lower than their validation limits. EG an A-340 had a certification ceiling of 41000 feet. To get that certification on the proofing flight they had to attain about 55,000 (usually as a zoom climb from 25,000 going so fast they got mach buffet) and have demonstrated no flame-out and good control authority. Basically a civilian jet has a design limit which is high enough to ensure a comfortable margin over the validation limit, which in turn is usually 30% higher than the certification limit. This can lead to some amusing situations at the Airbus plant. EG when the new composite wings for the A-340 (this is a very long time ago) were being validated, one of the tests is a mandated destructive wing loading test. Only one problem. It's a composite wing, and the composites used were the next grade up from those specified. The adhesives company had developed a better adhesive than the original one specified which they offered at a cheaper price which was just signed off on the nod as it was to be tested anyway. The wing designer had assumed cost cutting and getting lower grade glue and composites than specified so had beefed up the design a little to compensate. The principle design engineer had also factored this in, in the specification. So instead of being about 10% stronger than it needed to be it was something like 35%. Add that to it being the strongest wing they had produced at the time as it was for the largest aircraft they had designed at that point and the test rig broke before the wing did. Rumour has it that the wing took 800 tonnes of stress without breaking much of a sweat. That meant a technical failure of the test as they had not been able to state the load to cause failure. I think the new rig that replaced it could go up to something mental like 5000 tonnes. This is needed ad the MTOW for an A-380 is near 600 tonnes so the force needed to break a wing is something bonkers like 1900 tonnes. The certification load is something like 1200 tonnes (per wing which equates to 4G). I actually flew on a proofing flight of an A-340 and what was done to that aircraft was amazing. We actually pulled a 5G turn in it and after the zoom climb to 55,000 did a parabolic dive and went weightless. As for cost if it's 0.68 per litre the A-380 takes a tad over 320,000 litres according to wiki. So that would be roughly $220,000USD - enough to make your eyes water.
it is same for me when drive car on long distance-i can take extra 100 litres of fuel but that additional 100kg weight rises consumption for 1 litre per 100km, so i take it if on destination price of fuel is higher than additional cost of fuel transport
That was very detailed. It just shows how much thought engineers have gone to and pilots have a good understanding of the mechanics of a plane. The importance of fuel filters are unrivalled. At least there is a by pass option in a bad scenario.
Hi Mentour! I like your videos a lot, so i'been subscribed more than 2 years to your channel. I'm doing my ATPL Theory now, so i't be great if you could add more technical detail and explanations in your video. Certainly, to the appropriate extent so others could also enjoy the topic.
The Gimli Glider incident might have been averted if they had checked the fuel loaded in terms of price in US $, they might have thought 'Wow, bargain!' then 'er....'..
