Hey. You're right Wayne. I'm no King Air expert.
I'd go read up, but it's doubtful I'd ever buy or operate such an aircraft, especially with all your warnings of fiscal doom for everyone who purchases one, unless they hire you to complete the deal.
(I promise. I'll hire ya if I ever strike it rich fixing someone else's server farm at 2AM. I hear that leprechauns sometimes bury their gold underneath data center removable floor tiles.)
The "pros" ended up in the water and I didn't. That pretty much speaks for itself. As long as my tally in the "fuel exhaustion" column remains zero, I'm happy. I get to laugh at the sinking "pros". What else is an Internet forum for?
(In other words why don't you just act like a normal human being and explain why looking to see that the tanks are full wouldn't have worked... You don't have to be a prick about it.)
I know the path to success above a certain pay grade is more about using your elbows than anything else these days, but since I'm not playing in the "let's go be a broke Pro pilot" game, and I'm sure as hell not in the aircraft brokering biz, so I'm not sure what you throwing elbows is supposed to accomplish here.
See, if you'd just have explained, I would have said this really cool phrase... "Thanks Wayne. That's fascinating information."
Get your kicks whichever way you like. It's the Internet. Place is lousy with people who can't get along. No surprise there. I'll still buy ya a beer sometime if you like.
My point, and you know it, was that if you 100% trust line personnel with your fuel load and don't know it yourself, via whatever means you like, you're not "pro" pilot, you're just a passenger until the crash.
Look in the King Air tanks, unzip and drop your "dipstick" in it, drop a vaccuum cleaner down there, trust an FAA "certified" totalizer... I really don't care how.
The post I was responding to was saying that pilots of larger aircraft often trust the linemen 100%. I responded saying that's a pretty good way to end up floating in the ocean.
If looking in the tanks isn't the right way to check fuel levels on a King Air, you'd still better know if you're going to run out of gas over a big pond.
The "pros" went for a swim. Yay pros!
Feel free to share how you'd have done it. It is the whole point of the thread, after all. Tossing elbows at me is pretty much a waste of all our time.
The thread, like most accident threads, is bunch of us sitting around watching the train wreck and commenting from "the front porch of aviation" until the "We suspect, but have no proof, that X happened, because the aircraft is on the bottom of the ocean..." report comes in a year or so from now from some government agency charged with all our "safety".
Official news flash: Pro pilots ran out of gas.
I'm also guessing crashing in the ocean won't ever be considered "safe" operation. Just a guess.
Let me know if that's incorrect. I bet there will be some FAASTeam seminars on it soon.
I already said there aren't any published facts to go on. Let me re-phrase that sentence: "This thread is a giant circle-jerk."
Does that make it clearer since it was at the top of my post? I was trying to be nice.
With the above stipulation, I then effectively said "check your fuel load yourself, pilots".
I'll make sure to look up how to do it myself if I ever have the opportunity to fly a King Air over open water.
Love you. Smile. You can take all the swings at me you want to. My opinion that no one should trust a line guy with their fuel load 100%, is still quite valid.
