Hello all,

As a simple frequent flyer with an interest in aviation, I would like to ask a question after I suffered a minor (in terms of inconvenience) but interesting air travel mishap tonight.
I was booked on LH 1862 MUC-MXP (operated by Air Dolomiti). After all passengers were onboard, the captain came out of the cockpit and went on PA announcing that ground crew had mistakenly refueled the aircraft (E-190) with an excessive quantity, causing the airplane to be over maximum landing weight upon reaching destination, therefore they had to defuel and all passengers should disembark to allow the operation due to safety reasons.
This caused 1-hour delay, after which the flight was completed normally.
It looked quite clumsy to my uneducated eye, just wanted to ask if this is a relatively frequent occurrence and where does usually the mistake happen.
Thanks to whoever cares to answer my curiosity.
Cheers!

More than likely there was a last minute tail swap somewhere in the mix.

It happens, not often but it happens. Fueler grabs the wrong paperwork or doesn't double check the aircraft and stand number. More likely at a hub is a plane is fueled for a long flight, goes OOS or is swapped for some reason to a shorter flight after its fueled. I haven't heard of making passengers deplane for defueling though.

It happens more than it should.

Refueling of most airliners in Europe is carried out by the bowser driver. He will set up the qty and pump fuel until the correct amount is reached. On most aircraft nowadays, this cut off is automatic. The refueller is unlikely to notice that the automatic system has not cut off, as most of them do not watch. Overfuelling is quite common, but does not often cause defuelling. Normally the aircraft can carry the extra fuel without a problem.
The days of trained mechanics refuelling aircraft is long gone.

It could also be a case of a last minute increase in passengers and bags/cargo. Fuel was added based on lighter weight but when the weight jumped up last minute, they were over max landing weight. MUC-MXP is not a very long flight so a faster speed or lower altitude might not work.

I worked in ground handling for quite some years, and experienced a few overfuelings every so often. However here in AMS I've never witnessed a de-fueling of any sort, I'm surprised they were able to arrange this in MUC within just an hour!

Martijn

Adispatcher wrote:

It happens more than it should.

I would have to disagree. In my 30+ years in commercial aviation, I can count the times it has happened to me or I heard of it on one finger! Generally, the times it has happened is when the payload increases significantly after the aircraft has fueled, a cancellation or a late arrival in a hub and the MLW is exceeded. For all the widebody "critical" flights, my experience has been a preliminary fuel load based on projected load and then a final fuel load after all the pax are checked in. So, like I said, it rarely happens at least in my experience.

mmo wrote:

Adispatcher wrote:

It happens more than it should.

I would have to disagree. In my 30+ years in commercial aviation, I can count the times it has happened to me or I heard of it on one finger! Generally, the times it has happened is when the payload increases significantly after the aircraft has fueled, a cancellation or a late arrival in a hub and the MLW is exceeded. For all the widebody "critical" flights, my experience has been a preliminary fuel load based on projected load and then a final fuel load after all the pax are checked in. So, like I said, it rarely happens at least in my experience.

In my experience as a dispatcher, an overfuel of, say, 2,000lbs or more, happens to me maybe once or twice a week on the domestic side. That's greater than 1% of the flights I work. I'm not counting an aircraft swap or an aircraft coming from an engine run, etc. as overfueled here, but just negligence on the person physically fueling the aircraft. A majority of the time, an amended release will take care of the problem, but sometimes a defuel is necessary due to performance limitations.

My company doesn't do preliminary and final fuels, however. When the button is pushed to send the release, that's the number it should be fueled to.

curlyheadboy wrote:

Hello all,

As a simple frequent flyer with an interest in aviation, I would like to ask a question after I suffered a minor (in terms of inconvenience) but interesting air travel mishap tonight.
I was booked on LH 1862 MUC-MXP (operated by Air Dolomiti). After all passengers were onboard, the captain came out of the cockpit and went on PA announcing that ground crew had mistakenly refueled the aircraft (E-190) with an excessive quantity, causing the airplane to be over maximum landing weight upon reaching destination, therefore they had to defuel and all passengers should disembark to allow the operation due to safety reasons.
This caused 1-hour delay, after which the flight was completed normally.
It looked quite clumsy to my uneducated eye, just wanted to ask if this is a relatively frequent occurrence and where does usually the mistake happen.
Thanks to whoever cares to answer my curiosity.
Cheers!

I had this happen last December, but the solution was a bit more innovative.

I was on a Delta Connection CRJ-900 from DTW-ORD. Before pushback, the captain told us that the plane had just come out of maintenance and we had too much fuel aboard to safely land in Chicago. So, after we pushed back and started the engines, the crew stopped the plane and brought the thrust up to what seemed slightly higher than normal taxi thrust, and we held there with the engines spooled up for about 15 minutes. Then, after departure, we leveled off at a much lower altitude than we'd normally be at and the spoilers were extended, which is how they remained until we were on final approach to ORD. I was actually so confused as to why the spoilers were out I asked the flight attendant, who asked the captain. A minute later, the Captain came on the blower and explained that they were out so we'd burn as much fuel as possible.

Domestic RJ flights within the US are usually pretty dull, so I found that strange situation was somewhat welcome! Has anyone else seen a similar problem dealt with this way?

N415XJ wrote:

I had this happen last December, but the solution was a bit more innovative.

Burns all the gas instead of saving it, but it's a good way to keep your schedule and not have the FOQA thingy tell on you.

Adispatcher wrote:

but just negligence on the person physically fueling the aircraft. A majority of the time, an amended release will take care of the problem, but sometimes a defuel is necessary due to performance limitations.

My company doesn't do preliminary and final fuels, however. When the button is pushed to send the release, that's the number it should be fueled to.

I am not sure who you work for or who you get your fuel servicing from but there sounds like there are serious problems with that. I can't remember a time where there has been a time, again me personally, have been overfueled due to negligence. I was fortunate to work for large well run carriers who has very strict procedures in place which would prevent that kind of situation.

With respect to final fuels, maybe they should. My experience has been, especially on long range flights, it does provide a dramatic increase in completion factors and results in far fewer fuel related diversions. The other benefit is you can normally get an increase in cargo uploaded.

I only recall defuelling a couple of times and that was due to the aircraft having a fuel tank seal leak. One particular 747 I recall had to lose a lot of fuel (into tankers) to get the fuel level below the valves they use for dumping gas.because an engineer had forgotten to restow them after testing them as part of routine maintenance. As others have said, the usual reason is because of an aircraft swap that requires a much lower fuel load or because a flight plan has been reissued due change of weather forecast/ major drop in zero fuel weight.

mmo wrote:

Adispatcher wrote:

but just negligence on the person physically fueling the aircraft. A majority of the time, an amended release will take care of the problem, but sometimes a defuel is necessary due to performance limitations.

My company doesn't do preliminary and final fuels, however. When the button is pushed to send the release, that's the number it should be fueled to.

I am not sure who you work for or who you get your fuel servicing from but there sounds like there are serious problems with that. I can't remember a time where there has been a time, again me personally, have been overfueled due to negligence. I was fortunate to work for large well run carriers who has very strict procedures in place which would prevent that kind of situation.

With respect to final fuels, maybe they should. My experience has been, especially on long range flights, it does provide a dramatic increase in completion factors and results in far fewer fuel related diversions. The other benefit is you can normally get an increase in cargo uploaded.

I work for one of the major U.S. carriers and I do believe we have a problem with our fuel vendors, especially at hub airports. Our corporate fuel is definitely tighter than I would prefer, but we get very little pushback from management about fuel loads. Even if they did balk, they can't do anything about it.

Thanks all for the interesting answers..!

We were in FCO the other week and a DL A330 asked ATC to hold position at the threshold of 25, to burn fuel for about 15mins. Probably a decrease in wind combined with a higher temp or something similar caused them to be overweight for take-off. Probably easier to burn it off before departure instead of refuelling a few 100kgs.

Quite a few years ago, I took a 767-300F on a run from XXX via MLA to YYY. We loaded the aircraft up in MLA, and gave the onboard engineer the order to 'top up tanks to 27 tons'. He misunderstood that, and put 27 tons on top of the 11-odd we already had onboard. Result: We'd be too heavy for landing in YYY. We established contact with the fuelling company, who told us that de-fuelling had to be ordered 24-hours in advance. Our arguments that one hardly knew de-fuelling would be necessary 24-hours in advance fell on deaf ears.

We requested a new flight plan, which would see us cruise at FL270 instead of the planned FL370, and after departure we flew gear-down at 3000ft for a few minutes, until the FMC told us we'd be landing right at MLW. Happy with that, we climbed and continued. However, entering KSA airspace we were given a couple of directs (short cuts), and although we tried to decline them ATC kept on clearing us direct to a waypoint somewhere in the distance. We were also told that FL270 was unavailable, and asked whether we'd prefer 370 or 390 - nothing lower was offered. This all meant we'd once again be too heavy for landing, so the decision was made to extend the spoilers and make the engines work a bit harder. We ended up flying with spoilers 1/2 extended for almost an hour, during which an untold number of good hearted insults were hurled in the general direction of the engineer.

The engineer bought quite a few rounds when we finally made the hotel at destination!

Mis-fueling is not as easy as one might think. The Fuel sheet has the Registration Number and the flight number of the outbound flight and the fueler is supposed to match those to the fuel sheet BEFORE fueling along with the fuel on board and the Block fuel to be boarded. It's a pretty sorry fueler that can't do that.

strfyr51 wrote:

Mis-fueling is not as easy as one might think. The Fuel sheet has the Registration Number and the flight number of the outbound flight and the fueler is supposed to match those to the fuel sheet BEFORE fueling along with the fuel on board and the Block fuel to be boarded. It's a pretty sorry fueler that can't do that.

Presumably he's referring to a 737 that doesn't have an automatic mode, in which case negligence could easily lead to an overfuel. I can't imagine any station where there's multiple 2,000+ lb overfuels per week is allowing the fuelers to fuel in manual for any type that has an auto mode, i.e. almost everything besides a 737.

This happened to me just last week flying from FLL to NAS. The first E90 went tech due to wiper blade issue so we had to deplane while waiting for another E90. Boarded that, almost ready to go and then we were asked to get off that! Pilot explained the replacement E90 had been fueled to fly to Kingston Jamaica and as Nassau is half the distance, they needed to take off some fuel. Hard for me to understand but then I am not a pilot.

You don't have to be a pilot to grasp the concept that flying with 2x fuel as is required for the trip could result in an overweight landing, unnecessary fuel burn, or a reduction in performance such that the aircraft might no longer be able to meet runway requirements or obstacle clearance.