I’m impressed that considering the band’s name was in the article, you still managed to not only spell it wrongly, but wrongly in two wildly different ways.
I saw that. But how could experienced passenger plane pilots screw up like this?
This was a passenger plane. Not some Cessna charter with a inexperienced pilot.
There’s a youtube interview with Gene Odem (childhood friend on the plane) that claims the auto rich position was on. That it burns 25 gallons extra per hour. Don’t know if he’s right or not.
If you think that’s bad, the Gimli Glider was a 767 with 69 people on board that ran out of fuel through a serious of human errors, including confusion between metric and imperial units. The story of the dead stick landing is remarkable - nobody killed or seriously injured.
Lots of them seem very preventable in hindsight. And this one may well have been, but the fact is good pilots are human and sometimes screw up. This has been very successfully mitigated in the last few decades by some big changes in how we do things as flight crews.
For example, checklist usage is more detailed. I fly a light jet and my company’s checklist for engine pre-start includes a fuel check. Three times in my career I’ve seen this check prevent a problem. It still might have been caught further down the line, but having that one small item there on the checklist is a big deal.
We’ve also changed how flight crews interact. It used to be, if you were a first officer, you sat down, shut up and didn’t touch anything without the captain telling you to. That’s been completely turned on its head in the last 25 or so years. Now there is an emphasis on both crew members communicating, being fully involved in all decisions and double-checking each other.
Prior to these kinds of sea changes, accidents of this sort were way more common. That’s not identify any one, precise reason for this particular crash. But it was in a different time in terms of how flying works.
As a General Aviation pilot, I was taught that fuel gauges are notoriously inaccurate. When I was actively flying, I always visually checked the fuel (as specified on the checklist) to make sure it was up to the tabs (because I have no problem ‘tankering’ fuel). When I had my biennial a couple of years ago, we used a calibrated dipstick.
Granted, it’s not as easy visually checking the fuel in a Convair 240; but IMO there’s virtually no excuse for running out of fuel
Thank you Llama Llogophile and Johnny L.A. for weighing in.
This was the day the music died for my generation. I was in 10th grade. I remember the radio stations playing Skynyrd’s music non-stop for several days in a row. I had all their albums. Wore them out on my cheep record player. The senselessness of the crash always bugged me. Your bird ran out of gas and crashed? WTH? But that’s what happened. SNAFU in the truest sense.
The three Van Zant brothers left a lasting legacy with Skynyrd and 38 Special. I think there would have been a third great Southern Rock band if Johnny Van Zant didn’t take over in Ronnie’s old band.
NTSB Identification: DCA78AA001
14 CFR Part 135 Nonscheduled operation of L & J COMPANY
Aircraft: CONVAIR 240, registration: N55VM
FILE DATE LOCATION AIRCRAFT DATA INJURIES FLIGHT PILOT DATA
F S M/N PURPOSE
3-3896 77/10/20 GILLSBURG,MS CONVAIR 240 CR- 2 0 0 COMMERCIAL AIRLINE TRANSPORT, AGE
TIME - 1852 N55VM PX- 4 19 1 AIR TAXI-PASSG 34, 6802 TOTAL HOURS, 68
DAMAGE-DESTROYED OT- 0 0 0 IN TYPE, INSTRUMENT
RATED.
DEPARTURE POINT INTENDED DESTINATION
GREENVILLE,SC BATON ROUGE,LA
TYPE OF ACCIDENT PHASE OF OPERATION
ENGINE FAILURE OR MALFUNCTION IN FLIGHT: NORMAL CRUISE
COLLIDED WITH: TREES LANDING: FINAL APPROACH
PROBABLE CAUSE(S)
PILOT IN COMMAND - MISMANAGEMENT OF FUEL
MISCELLANEOUS ACTS,CONDITIONS - INATTENTIVE TO FUEL SUPPLY
MISCELLANEOUS ACTS,CONDITIONS - FUEL EXHAUSTION
FACTOR(S)
PILOT IN COMMAND - INADEQUATE PREFLIGHT PREPARATION AND/OR PLANNING
POWERPLANT - MISCELLANEOUS: OTHER
COMPLETE POWER LOSS - COMPLETE ENGINE FAILURE/FLAMEOUT-2 ENGINES
EMERGENCY CIRCUMSTANCES - FORCED LANDING OFF AIRPORT ON LAND
REMARKS- R ENG MALFUNCTION OF UNDETERMINED NATURE RESULTED IN HIGHER THAN NORMAL FUEL CONSUMPTION.
Johnny and Donnie Van Zant have made several albums together if you want to check them out. They stand right up there with their Skynyrd and .38 Special material.
Well, first up, 68 hours is not very experienced in an aircraft type. Second, experience alone doesn’t really mean anything. Look at all the bad car drivers out there, many of them are probably very experienced but it doesn’t make them good, it just means they’ve had lots of practice at being bad or barely adequate and lots of confirmation that barely adequate is good enough.
There are basically only three ways you can run out of fuel unexpectedly.
[ol]
[li]You didn’t know how much fuel you had to begin with.[/li][li]You have a fuel leak.[/li][li]You are using more fuel than expected.[/li][/ol]
A pilot with a reasonable sense of self preservation will have procedures that ensure all three of the above issues are dealt with before they become a problem. In some countries these procedures are enshrined in law and are also part of the company operating manuals.
Presumably these pilots either didn’t have an adequate set of procedures to follow regarding fuel management or they chose not to use them. Either way they failed to monitor how much fuel they had and it caught them out.
One thought. If they had flown the same route eastbound with X amount of fuel, perhaps they assumed the same amount of fuel would be enough to fly the westbound route. Wind however will make westbound trips longer in most cases.
I am a pilot, but only fly small, single-engine planes. It seems like a major screw-up especially on such a large plane.
Having flown entrainment types are around some, they can be rather demanding and make rapid changes in what they want to do when and really lay on the pressure to ‘hurry up.’ I wonder how they were in that regard and what was the experience and relationship of the pilots to the passengers who were calling the shots paying the money?
I am also confused about that right engine. Was just on this leg, this flight or for several flights that they were having to flow more fuel to it? That would have me watching fuel more than normal for me. That is assuming I would agree to depart with an engine that was acting like that. Well, actually I did once but that was a reposition of an a Grand Commander that was being held in a foreign country and departure was a lucky fluke so I took the window I had but anywho… Did they know exactly what was wrong with the engine or were just guessing they could get away with it? A lot of unknowns here I think.
Also the lack of time in type, was the 68 hours in that airplane or just that type? Did they know that actual airplane or? Had they been flying those types but not that particular one?
Is the 240, 340 & 440 all on the same type rating, if you can fly one of them you can fly all of them? I do not know what the regs were on those aircraft back at that time. Nor what major or minor differences there might have been.
Dead silence in multi-engine aircraft that totally surprise the pilots indicates to me that they did not know it was going to happen as no previous actions that would indicate that they knew they were dangerously low of fuel were noted.
Bad or inoperative fuel gauges?
I also come down on the ‘mistakes were made’ side of the cause.
