From ordering to into-wing operations, every member of the aviation fueling process shares the responsibility of ensuring precise fuel handling.
To help ensure everyone is doing their part correctly, Keith Clark, senior quality control and technical representative, Phillips 66, presented a on-demand video learning session titled “Navigating Bulk Aviation Fuel Orders and Airport Fuel Approval,” hosted by Aviation Week Network and sponsored by Phillips 66.
“Every time we order fuel, we have to do it consistently,” he said.
Fueling Safety
Safety begins with having the proper labels. The fuel farm must have the appropriate labels. And the fill points must be labeled accurately.
Clark showed an example of a new fuel farm with avgas on the left and jet fuel on the right. Neither is labeled. Both have the same size fittings.
“This is an accident waiting to happen,” he warned.
In another example, Clark showed an image with avgas and jet fuel labeled and a third pipe with no cap and no labeling. The jet fuel pipe is covered with an orange cap.
“Somebody lost the cap for the jet one. Since it was an open pipe, they stuck the orange cap on it,” he described, adding, this had been done for a while. “They said everybody knows that’s jet.”
Then one day the FBO was busy and mistakes were made.
The person at the FBO, checked in the fuel, performed API gravity and white bucket tests, and thought everything was good. The truck driver was told to hook up and dump the fuel. Seeing the avgas sign and the orange cap, which he knew meant vapor recovery, he chose the unlabeled, uncapped pipe, even though the fitting didn’t seem right, and dumped 7,500 gallons of jet fuel into the vapor recovery line that then went into multiple avgas tanks.
Nobody was supervising from the FBO and nobody caught the mistake, Clark said. The jet fuel also got into multiple avgas refueler trucks, and a mixture of jet fuel and avgas went into multiple airplanes.
“Luckily, somebody caught it before anybody took off and nobody died that day. But it was a mistake and it went way back before they ever received the fuel. It was a mistake when that cap got lost and didn’t put the correct cap back on. And labeling was not good,” he says.
This was a real case study that happened in the industry, explained Clark, who then showed an updated image with signs added and fill points secured with padlocks that have different keys.
New procedures were put in place, he explained, because that mistake was very costly.
“It was all because people didn’t take the time to look at it and say, ‘hey, this is an accident waiting to happen,’” Clark said.
