Flight International online news 09:00 GMT:  Irish regional operator Aer Arann has tightened its refuelling procedures following a serious incident in which an ATR 42-300’s starboard engine stopped following fuel exhaustion of the aircraft’s right-hand wing tank.

In a report into the 8 August 2003 incident the Irish Air Accident Investigation Unit (AAIU) concludes that, while overseeing refuelling at London Luton Airport, the ATR’s captain inadvertently dispensed all the uplifted fuel into the aircraft’s left-hand wing tank.

 The aircraft subsequently departed for Galway with 1,166kg of fuel in its left-hand tank and only 277kg in its right-hand tank – an imbalance of 889kg, far above the maximum permissible imbalance of 550kg, which resulted in the pilots’ needing to provide countering control inputs.

Sixty-nine minutes into the flight, as the aircraft was cruising at flight level 180 just west of Dublin, the ATR’s starboard engine flamed out. The crew opted to divert to Shannon where the aircraft landed with a single engine operating. None of the 48 passengers or three crew was injured.

AAIU investigators found that the captain opted to refuel the aircraft at London Luton using the manual triggers alone but chose not to dip the fuel tanks to check their contents, largely to save time because the flight was already running far behind schedule.

Aer Arann has since clarified its technical reporting and refuelling procedures, underlining the importance of dipping checks, and revised procedures for operating aircraft whose fuel gauges are suspected of being unreliable.

In its safety recommendations the AAIU has advised ATR to fit clear markings to the manual toggles which open the wing-tank refuelling valves, in order to ensure that they are not misidentified, particularly because the reliability of the automatic refuelling system means that the manual toggles are rarely used.

 

Source: Flight International

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