more on helicopter crash.

[The Other Mike]

Panic over, the AAIB can stand down as it'll all be solved by the public enquiry that Bob 'shit for brains' Crow of the RMT is now calling for.

[The Natural Philosopher]

I heard on the way from the oppital that they company has grounded the entire range after summat happened on a flight.

So more to come..

[charles]

If you look at the BBC news page an English police spokesman is reported as saying: " .... we will increase the minimum fuel level at which pilots are allowed to operate.".

[chris French]

Yes, B "In light of the technical issue identified by Bond Air Services, as a precautionary measure, we are increasing fuel levels on all NPAS EC135 aircraft and increasing the minimum level of fuel which pilots are allowed to operate on."

Which suggests it is something related to the fuel supply.

[John Williamson]

Listening to the interviews on Radio 4 as the story unfolded, it seems there was a fuel level indicator fault on one of their other helicopters of the same type, so the operator made a decision to ground their whole fleet of this type as a precaution until that particular fault could be checked for. After a couple of hours, most of the fleet were back in service,having been cleared. Bonds (The operators) are understandably a touch nervous at the moment, especially after other incidents involving their machinery in the North Sea area.

Someone has mnentioned that the fault was a low fuel warning light coming on too early, which is unlikely to cause an engine stoppage due to lack of fuel. The operators have also increased their minimum allowed fuel load while flying.

[Windmill]

There must be a few where it's 'Oh sh

[John Williamson]

Low level warning light coming on before it was expected to, according to a statement read out on the radio earlier. They'll all be back in the air by tomorrow, probably.

[Windmill]

95l. sounds like a lot to a car driver.

Turbines are thirsty beasts. For a twin turbine machine, 95l. is nothing; might be just the unusable fuel in the bottom of the tank(s).

What is full fuel for this machine? It wouldn't surprise me if it was

1000l. or more.

[Tim+]

Should have been more than enough to return to base. See

if you want to know more. The thread is 64 pages long now though!

Tim

[Nightjar]

On 13/12/2013 08:17, Windmill wrote: ...

95 litres is slightly more than the combined capacity of the two engine supply tanks, and they give at least 20 minutes' flying time. (22 mins for one engine and 25 mins for the other IIRC)

663 litres. This aircraft took off with 400kgs = 500 litres of fuel aboard.

Colin Bignell

[Huge]

The few I've heard on the internet seem to consist of enormous amounts of background racket as alarms go off, with robotic voices shouting "Pull up! Pull up!" and stall warnings. Then silence.

[Dave Liquorice]

Not really my average fill up is 70+ l.

I think the AAIB interim report said it took on 400 kg of fuel before the flight.

"Usable fuel capacity (standard tank): 185 gal." "Maximum endurance (with no reserves): 3.6 hrs."

USA site so US gallons = 700 l. So 95 l is around about 30 mins flying time best but even if you say 45 l you still have 15 mins...

[GB]

It was flying for a couple of hours, IIRC, so using about 200 litres an hour.

95 litres remaining was not an awful lot, was it? Around 30 minutes flying, albeit they were nearly back at base. Is it usual to run things so close? I know that 30 mins is plenty, really, but given the catastrophic consequences of running out of fuel, I'd have thought that a bit more of a margin would be good.