I broke a cardinal rule of aviation 

"There's nothing more useless than runway behind you, altitude above you, and fuel in the bowser." I'd say clichés are less useful than at least two of those: Altitude available you means you can climb without infringements; fuel in the bowser means you can fill up at Redhill when you land ;)

Almost 400 quid to fill your bird up - now I remember why I fly a Rotax powered Microlight. 😉 Great video! "better safe on the ground than unsafe in the air"

"Emergency landing procedure at night: Landing light on, if you don't like what you see.... landing light off"

"There's never any point in having runway behind you." Dennis Pascoe, CFI, Cambridge Flying Group in the 80s, ex-Boscombe Down test pilot.

"I'm low on fuel -- but legal!" ... the modern mantra for every airline pilot, everywhere. sigh... Nicely managed.

Recently got into watching your videos, really enjoy them. I am a low hours PPL, got about 100hrs total half of which was the PPL course. Every time I watch your videos I learns something new or am reminded of something I should be doing more of! Thanks! 👍🏻

My instructor used to say, "Decide how long you'd like to live and fly accordingly".

Wonderful seeing Elstree (EGTR) where I flew happily between 1995 and 2010. Great video. Keep up your good work.

Brilliant, great to watch, I did some of my CPL training in an Arrow 1 from 1968!, great plane.

With you 100% - the important thing with any risk is always to assess it and plan how you're going to manage it. Sometimes management means doing something differently/with extra care, sometimes it means not doing something. It's down to the specific situation.

A gliding club I used to fly at were fans of “If you don’t know, ask!” That little gem got wheeled out every time someone made a mistake. Don’t think they’d ever heard of ‘just culture’ there…

Time to spare, go by air. Gets on my nerves every time! The fuel one is very true though and I'm guilty of saying it!

My favorite is: What are the three most important things in flying a fixed wing aircraft? The answer: Airspeed airspeed and airspeed!

Just wondering why you didn't factor Fairoaks in for your fuel stop? Either as your first choice or the diversion if you got delays at Farnborough or BB. Fairoaks as1st choice would have eliminated having to cross Farnborough, (saving time) Fairoaks as the Alternate would have been closer and have had fuel which you said Redhill didn't.

I'm mot a pilot but I have heard this cliché : Always fly the aeroplane; never let the aeroplane fly you. I think it's about situational awareness and anticipating what comes next so that your brain is always a step or two ahead of the current situation and, therefore, always a step ahead of your aeroplane.

On a day with the weather as it was and so many suitable diversion airfields I would have gone direct to Elstree as it is clear that you would have been overhead Elstree with your 30 min final reserve intact. If Elstree had become unavailable there would have been three airfields within ten minutes flying time to divert to. Yes you should be on the ground with your final reserve intact but the reason you have a final reserve is to allow for unforeseen circumstances. The ultra conservative fuel planning in GA is a result of unreliable fuel gauges, poor use of mixture control and lack of fuel flow indicators. Your demonstration of the correct use of the mixture control was refreshing but I would hazard a guess that most pilots fresh from their PPL course have never been taught to lean an engine correctly and have no idea how to set a flight manual defined power setting.

Love the video! I see your plane every time I fuel up as I fly from Redhill :) Actually reassuring to hear your take on taking risks. As a new PPL I'm constantly anxious I'm going to be victim of the Killing Zone.

"When Pontius was a pilot."

Looking in your manual, there is always a way to fly economically. 55% power is what we used in the Comanche if we were not in a hurry and to save fuel, instead of 75% power. There is always the option of flying higher boost, lower revs. But even leaning properly can reduce fuel consumption at any altitude.

Thanks for another interesting video. One comment - at 10:35, as part of the briefing for Blackbushe to Elstree, you said you were going to turn left to enter the 'corridor' - I was pleased to see that you (correctly) turned right. Although, with still close to full fuel, a left turn would have been practical!

Great video, thanks for sharing. It was really interesting to see the decisions being made. I had a similar "close call" a few months back although in flight. I diverted on the way back for fuel as my partner was with me and then had way more fuel left in the tanks that I had calculated. It still feels like the right decision.

"If it can happen, it will happen", annoys me as it implies all aircraft will fall out of the sky.

I really hate the “any landing you can walk away from…… “ variants it’s utter garbage for a start, but generally said by someone who thinks it’s the first time you’ve heard it.

if you are thinking about fuel, you are low on fuel :)

If you had that much doubt over your fuel, why didn't you stop and fill up at a closer airfield? Seems like a lot of unnecessary stress. It looks like you didn't know how much fuel was in the tanks and needn't have worried if you had better information. Thanks for sharing though. Interested in your reasoning and decision making

Not quite a cliche but one i hear regularly - "the IMC rating is a get-you-out-of-trouble rating and should be not be used in IMC" !!!! Seriously?

When people say climbing to 2.5 rather than 2500!!

I'm not sure whether the use of "bingo time" in this video is correct or not ...

You said you had 47 litres in your tanks at Redhill. Surely that's way than you need to go from Redhill to Elstree, even anticlockwise around the TMA in your turbo PA28

Final reserve for piston is 45 minutes not 30

Another excellent video :)

"Hot, high and heavy" You really can have too much fuel sometimes. Always do your performance calculations.

How do you measure fuel? Thought the arrow 3 had sloped tanks like my arrow 4. I have a GI375 with fuel gauges, very accurate. Looking in the tanks rather useless

Aviation clichees: 4 most useless things in aviation: 1. Yesterday's weather 2. Sky above 3. Runway behind 4. Fuel in the bowser Generally I agree with 1 & 3. 2 is often, but not always, true. 4 sometime true (if your W&B can cope with it), however, 6 hours fuel for a 1 hour flight is excessive and detremental to performance.

The thing is a cliché is only valid within some realm of contexts. E.g. I find the "every landing you can walk away from is a good landing" a good general yard stick, but that is just because of the contexts that come to my mind. I don't think of that cliché in a "wow, that was perilous, but everyone walked away, so ..."-situation, in which case I might disagree with that very same cliché.

Cliche': Written on the desk of my first jet airlines' Chief Pilot. 'A superior pilot is one who uses his superior judgment to avoid situations that might involve the use of his superior skills'

Never pass Gas! ;)

Here one lol The three most useless things in aviation are the runway behind you, the altitude above you, and the fuel in the truck.

The difference in fuel cost between Redhill and Blackbushe more than paid for that sausage bap

You need to land with 45 mins FINRES intact in a piston aeroplane, many including myself like to bump that up to 1 hour, 30 mins is only for turbine engines. Not meaning to sound judgmental just respectfully pointing out, commercial student here.

"If its not Boeing, I'm not going" has become "If it's Boeing, I'm not going....."

Love it. The cliché list is great.....they go on and on. I think others here have already quoted my top list! Fuel wise, I remember back in the late 1980's a young chap who was fairly new to flying and a recently qualified PPL. I had a part time job at Fairoaks as ground crew and Fire crew. One sunny Saturday he turned up enthusiastically ready to take a trip to the Isle of Wight in a club PA28. He requested full fuel and commenced his walk round and pre flight. Then his passengers arrived in the car park. All three were pretty massive folk! They also had a fair number of reasonably large bags with them for a day out at the seaside, including an epic picnic.....he began to sweat a little as he realised the possible performance issues! Nonetheless, despite someone offering to help syphon off some fuel, he pressed on.....the take off was remarkable and how he didn't end up in the field beyond the end of the runway, I will never know. But incredibly, he made it and arrived safely for the day out and returned safely that evening. Lesson learned I suspect.🫣

As a member of a syndicate, we say any landing you can walk away from means you can go and put someone else’s name in the logbook. 🤣

My favourite cliche is "Mummy, when I grow up I want to be a pilot". "I'm sorry darling, you can't do both". I think the essence of the "better to be on the ground" and "if there's doubt..." cliches is safety. A competent pilot has a reasonable grasp of the risks and should be using TEM to mitigate or avoid them. Those cliches serve as reminders that decision making in aviation is an individual thing and not always based on an exact appreciation of all the variables on the day, so I view them as "OK, I've done my appreciation. I've ruled out all the things that would prevent me flying, but lets step back for a minute and review it all".

I'm confused, where was the dip stick?

67 litres of fuel = Jon stressed 67 litres of fuel = a full fuel tank for me! 65 nominal tank size but I can squeeze 70 in. And ouch your refill bill

For VFR the 30 minutes reserve is a planning requirement, for non commercial operations it isn't a minimum landing reserve like airlines, so if you go into it that isn't a problem (obviously unless it is going to run out!)

The "any landing you can walk away from" one really grinds my (landing) gears. One I do like though is that you don't stop flying the moment you touch down. You stop flying at the end of your engine shutdown checklist. (And then you clean the bugs off the plane)

Hers one mostly for road travel, but I guess can also be for flying, "Its better to take time and get there than rush and not get there at all".

Why not go to Fairoaks for fuel, then get an Ascot-Burnham transit through Heathrow from there to Elstree?

Speed is life, altitude is life insurance

You always have enough fuel to reach the scene of the crash.

First of all I enjoy your videos and like to see what it's like flying a similar aircraft to what I fly in a very different part of the world to me! But... "I know how much fuel I had 3 flights ago and worked it out from there" seems crazy to me. All of the planes I fly have dipsticks and I check the fuel in both tanks with the dipstick before EVERY flight. I know you can get a good feel for how much fuel the plane burns and often the estimated fuel is very close to the actual amount of fuel in the tank but it takes like 5 seconds extra in your preflight to dip the tanks and know the fuel quantity for sure. So many GA accidents / incidents are caused by fuel exhaustion so to me it just makes sense to know exactly how much fuel you have before every departure.

Hi there. Did you happen to be in the cafe at Bridgend Garden Centre a couple of weeks back? Perhaps whilst visiting EGPJ. I'm convinced my wife and I saw you there. If not, you have a very close look alike!!

I was caught out on the same day. I took IZ to Headcorn to fill up, as it's only 20 mins away, and watched some strange people jumping out of planes 😂

Better 20 minutes late in this life than 20 years early in the next, my instructor back in the 80s when reminding me not to rush my pre flight.

I think I would have put in a couple of 5 gallon cans of Avgas from another source prior to take off, as inconvenient as that is. still better than running low.

Yeah Jon that got the Bismarck too -Captain Lindemann waiving the chance to refuel in the Norwegian fjords sealing his fate. 😀😀😀

Great informative video , but with the cost of fuel bought as well that was without doubt the worlds most expensive sausage bap 😆

Interesting video and lovely filming as always. Where I instruct we teach the NCO minimum fuel requirement of 30 mins as you outlined but also encourage students to add sufficient fuel for a diversion from overhead the destination (which comes from IFR). Your video is also insightful from a human factors point of view. Even GA pilots have a desire to “press on” and do the flight if they planned to do it. The car journey would have been perhaps just over an hour each way. Also coping with stress if the workload had increased. As a more experienced pilot you have spare mental capacity whereas newer pilots - many of whom I see have already commented - would likely have less. I remember it was a long while before I would dare take off with less than tabs in a PA28. It feels like you were “lucky” on this day. You landed with a lot more fuel than you’d expected. This does raise the question, what if things had gone in the other direction as your estimate was clearly some way off. Thank you for continuing to make these videos.

Piper PA-28R-201T Turbo Cherokee Arrow III with a TSIO-360 200 HP 6 Cyl - Aircraft Serial #: 28R-7703154