Least amount of fuel on landing?

Andy Greever

Andy Greever

Pre-takeoff checklist
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Couldn't figure out how to do a poll here, so here is the question...

What is the least amount of fuel you have landed with, and what were the circumstances?

Bonus Question: What are your personal minimums for the amount of fuel you like to land with? (my personal minimum is 10 gallons, or 1 hour remaining on landing)

So far I have never landed with less than 14 gallons, 12 usable.

Am I too conservative?
 
I will never accuse anyone of being too conservative with fuel.

least ive landed with is zero. just happens that i took off with zero as well.

in power, ive landed with 1/2 hour on board. dont really like going that low though. 45 min to an hour is good for me.
 
I landed my Cherokee at KFLP to get fuel from Gastons....

I don't know how much fuel I had, but I can say that I probably couldn't have flown more than about 20 minutes....

But that was because I diverted and had to use my 30 minute reserve.
 
Lowest I had was a LOW FUEL indication on one of the two tanks. It was a 5NM repositioning flight in VFR conditions to get fuel, since our pump was down. I don't remember how much we actually put in.

Edit: I was NOT the one who flew it in. Knew something was low, though, when all the sumps on one side were dry.
 
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When I do aerobatics, I have to be on the low side if I take a passenger. But, it is usually over my airfield.
 
Least amount? 900 lb, or 9 minutes of flying, in an A-6, at NAS Fallon, May, 1974. We got flat lost coming back from the range after the INS dumped, the TACAN at Fallon was out, and I just plain screwed up the DR nav. We found ourselves about 30 miles north after leaving a range about 30 miles south -- long after the low fuel light came on. We kept our mouths shut but the crew chief told the skipper how much fuel they put in the plane (let's see, if we put in 15,100 lb, and it holds 16,000, that leaves...), and we got torched.

My personal minimum these days is 1 hour of fuel in light planes, i.e., I always plan to land with at least 1 hour in the tanks, and if I won't have that much, I change plans to land somewhere that I will have 1 hour left.
 
In the plane I never have less than an hour left on landing. But Henning put 30 gallons in my 29 gallon truck tank last week. Pretty impressive if you ask me............ 29 gallons; 30 usable. Not sure Henning was too impressed. :dunno:
 
I shudder when I even recall this episode. It was just a spectacular day and I had the lineman top-off the tanks. I checked the tank caps and all appeared to be in order. I proceeded to do some airport-hopping to those at which I had been signed-off. Such a gorgeous day, the two hours stretched to two and one-half hours while I was getting some nice aerial photos.

I looked at my right tank gauge. Empty??? I departed with 38 gallons. I then looked at the left tank gauge. Holy ****! It didn't look so hot, either.
I immediately contacted Knox County Regional KRKD, informed them of a possible fuel emergency, and diverted to that airport which was out of my territory(but it was the closest). This student diverted to same by -- are you ready for this? -- crossing the St. George River, and requesting a clearance from any traffic for a straight-in approach. Traffic cleared.

On the ground I did the post-flight check, most immediately the tanks, the left of which had a fuel cap hanging by its chain. The fuel truck came out and measured three gallons in the left tank. Total refuel? 35 gallons; and a replacement fuel cap that's not quite the same shade of red as on the other wing.

HR
(and the flight back to home base was of greater comfort)
 
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Lawreston said:
I shudder when I even recall this episode. [...]
HR
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Harley, Post Mortem (as if you didn't already do this :)): Did a good job of taking command of the situation once identified, but needed to have been monitoring fuel a little better throughout the flight, and maybe physically checked the caps after fueling. It wasn't clear whether you actually grasped and turned them when checking them. That said, there but for the grace of G*d... I could easily see it happening to me.
 
Lowest was 41.1 gallons fill with 53 usable on a Skyhawk. I stick with an hour's worth for any plane I may fly. As a standard, I figure 10 per hour for the Skyhawk and 15 per hour for the Skylane. That gives me a minimum of five hours endurance as a standard. It's not likely I'll want to be stuck up there for longer than that at a time, anyway.

I filled the Skylane with 69.1 gallons the other day. It has 75 usable. Another guy came back the "night" before with not even 6 gallons but he managed to burn some 35 gallons in 1.9 hours. His file was tabbed for a review by a CFI.
 
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My lowest was something like 9 gallons remaining in a 172- nearly all on one side, because I had forgotten to set the tank selector to one side when it was parked and it all migrated. I had landed fairly light at the destination, at which fuel was putatively available for purchase, but was not any longer.

So I took off and flew to the nearest available fuel (conveniently, in the same direction as home), at very conservative fuel consumption power setting (funny how it's hard to fly slowly to save fuel, when your brain says, "I wanna be there to get the fuel").

I agree with the "one hour left" theory, VFR, and I have never flown IFR and landed with less than 1.5 hr fuel remaining.
 
I did check the caps and each appeared to be tight. I'd been used to getting about three hours of flight time and landing with 8 to 10 gals. reserve. The diversion airport personnel said, I'd replace this cap; it's not as secure as the other cap." I've since had a unique paper weight on my desk.
 
Woody said:
Couldn't figure out how to do a poll here, so here is the question...

What is the least amount of fuel you have landed with, and what were the circumstances?

Bonus Question: What are your personal minimums for the amount of fuel you like to land with? (my personal minimum is 10 gallons, or 1 hour remaining on landing)

So far I have never landed with less than 14 gallons, 12 usable.

Am I too conservative?
Click to expand...

Lowest? About 3 gal (5 minute reserve) while seeding rice with the Ag Cat, but the strip we were working off was right there on the property. Rice is heavy...

Normal flying though, I don't go below FAA standard reserves and typically I won't go that low if it looks like I'll have to make a fuel stop anyway.
 
The least I've ever landed with in the 182 was 21 gallons, or over 1.5 hours. My longest single leg left me with 25 gallons, darn close to two hours. That was after a 5.3 hour flight.

Least I've ever landed with in an Archer was 19 gallons, also nearly two hours.

I consider my personal fuel mins to be at least an hour, preferably more for IFR.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
The least I've ever landed with in the 182 was 21 gallons, or over 1.5 hours. My longest single leg left me with 25 gallons, darn close to two hours. That was after a 5.3 hour flight.
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Yah, Kent, a 182 will fly so long, you want to get out and take a walk!
 
1.5 hours minimum. I usually land with over two, but have pushed the 1.5 a couple of times. The fuel guages look terribly low even with 2 hours left.
 
10 gal, 5 per side. Scheduled landing from Shenandoah to Fort Wayne. Strong headwinds made it a 4 hour leg and I was almost right at my personal 1 hour reserve limit.
 
I'd estimate about 1.5 gallons when I did my checkride in the R22 -- because the DE was pretty big we started out with about 11 gallons, did all of the flight stuff first and then finished up with the hover work. The low fuel light didn't come on, but it must have been very, very close. We both knew that fuel exhaustion in a low hover wouldn't have been a real big deal, though.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
Darn skippy! I really don't know why, but Cessna decided on the new 182's that they needed to add 17 more gallons to the fuel capacity! :eek:
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Our club 182 carries 87g usable, good for 5.8 at a conservative 15g/h.

I plan to land with at least 1hr on board, and I hedge that by planning at 2g/h more than what the planes acutally burn.
 
Old planes = not always accurate fuel gauges. Last training flight with the 'toga, we flew for an hour and came back to switch seats/top off fuel. The internal gauges said we had less than 10 in left tank, 15-20 in the right. That was consistent with what the gauges on the wings showed me to expect after an hour (IOW, I had just under 40 showing when we took off). While Janet was "using the facilities" I managed to pump 95.3 into the plane. It only carries 103 usable. I went pale when I saw how much it took. Less than 30 minutes doesn't work for me, ever.

Guess those gauges aren't so accurate. Won't be cutting it nearly THAT close again. My comfort zone departs when I get anywhere near an hour's worth left on board.

Jim G
 
grattonja said:
Guess those gauges aren't so accurate. Won't be cutting it nearly THAT close again.
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Dont like gauges, I like visual verification. In the planes with tabs, holes, etc., I use those for partial fuel loads. For the 172 (no tabs), we have one of those plastic (glass?) fuel sticks and stick the tanks.
 
grattonja said:
My comfort zone departs when I get anywhere near an hour's worth left on board.

Jim G
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Ditto. I ended up with 8.2 remaining in an Archer and I haven't stop kicking myself yet. But it does foster better habits in the future. >kick< Ow!

-Skip
 
grattonja said:
Old planes = not always accurate fuel gauges. Last training flight with the 'toga, we flew for an hour and came back to switch seats/top off fuel. The internal gauges said we had less than 10 in left tank, 15-20 in the right. That was consistent with what the gauges on the wings showed me to expect after an hour (IOW, I had just under 40 showing when we took off). While Janet was "using the facilities" I managed to pump 95.3 into the plane. It only carries 103 usable. I went pale when I saw how much it took. Less than 30 minutes doesn't work for me, ever.

Guess those gauges aren't so accurate. Won't be cutting it nearly THAT close again. My comfort zone departs when I get anywhere near an hour's worth left on board.

Jim G
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So how does Janet like the Saratoga? Are you doing any IFR flights with it? I imagine it gives ample space for "little Janet" in the rear.
 
We were leaving fuel-less Mackinaw Island and I thought I was on fumes. The 4 four fuel gauges were all indicating at the lower end.

I landed 5 nm away across the channel at St. Ignace and took on 56 gallons.

I had 27 gallons usable left or close to 2 hours, if I knew in which of the 4 tanks it all was.

I've duplicated that last year when I also wasn't sure where I was. I added the same 56 gallons or a little more
 
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I flew my Woodstock on a 250 mile 7 hour 50 minute joy ride one sunny day and landed with absolutely NO fuel on board.




OK, Woodstock is a sailplane.



But hey, I was totally out of water, food, and my rate of climb battery had been dead for an hour too.

MM
 
Woody said:
So far I have never landed with less than 14 gallons, 12 usable.

Am I too conservative?
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Depends on what you fly. That would be really bad in a 747 or a full tank in some LSA's.

Personally, it depends what I'm flying, how much I know the airplane and how much I know the area I'm in. No less than 15 minutes even if it's just around the pattern in an airplane.
 
My dual X/C ended up being an impromptu trip to BVO for the Biplane expo last May; full when we left, and not much more than 24 minutes' worth when we landed. I was a little chagrined. A little better planning and I could have at least landed with the FAA mins. But hey! I got to say "hi" to Diana for the first time ever when we overflew hers and Tom's farm!:D :yes:

Personally, I'll not do that again. Not only embarrasing, but potentially dangerous. :redface:

Jim
 
jshawley said:
My dual X/C ended up being an impromptu trip to BVO for the Biplane expo last May; full when we left, and not much more than 24 minutes' worth when we landed. I was a little chagrined. A little better planning and I could have at least landed with the FAA mins.
Personally, I'll not do that again. Not only embarrasing, but potentially dangerous. :redface:

Jim
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Those aren't "Mins", those are "reserves" and we carry them for exactly what happenned to you. It gives us a margin for the little unexpecteds and try to use as little of them as possible, but you never plan on using them.
 
I landed once with just under 40 minutes of fuel left. I always plan for a one hour minimum. Diverting around some weather ate into the reserves.
 
I don't think I've ever had less than an hour on board.

Even when I've done some 135 work I've never had any management be unhappy when we've asked for more fuel than the dispatcher's calculated 45 min reserve. The captains I've flown with never been fuel hogs, but I've never seen a trip planned with less than 60 min fuel remaining at landing, even in perfect weather.
 
Well, the worst case was perhaps 4-5 gallons usable. The situation was we were up the first flight after an annual filled to tabs. We were intending to do a cross country flight. Time to switch tanks, and the transfer valve would not move past center. A screw was out enough to stop the lever, and the first contact bent it over, so I could not get the screw out by hand and I had no tools. So we are on the one tank, and had to get down before running out. We turned around and flew direct to the nearest airport (still our home airport) and landed without incident. We still had about 18 gallons in the other tank, but could not use it.

Did you hear about the airliner that declared a fuel emergency and was not given the requested runway by the airport ATC? I think it was at Dallas. Hand off was clear, but someone decided to make the pilot use the current active runway and that kept them in the air a while for alignment. What do they burn an hour? They made it in, and I have not heard what fuel they had left. Everyone seems to be in agreement the ATC screwed this up, perhaps with help from an FAA guy also in the tower.
 
The only time you have too much fuel on board (assuming you are not over gross) is when you are on fire.

One hour sounds like a fine margin to me.

Woody said:
So far I have never landed with less than 14 gallons, 12 usable.

Am I too conservative?
Click to expand...
 
Bill Jennings said:
Dont like gauges, I like visual verification. In the planes with tabs, holes, etc., I use those for partial fuel loads. For the 172 (no tabs), we have one of those plastic (glass?) fuel sticks and stick the tanks.
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In the saratoga, there are two tanks, connected by basically a big tube. The upper tank is the one you fill. It holds, IIRC, about 15 gal. The bottom tank is really the main. It holds about 35. You cannot dip or see into the bottom tank. You HAVE to rely on the gauges in the plane, and the little external gauge on the main tank itself. And time. I'm going to be paying a lot more attention to time now.

Jim G
 
Aztec Driver said:
So how does Janet like the Saratoga? Are you doing any IFR flights with it? I imagine it gives ample space for "little Janet" in the rear.
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She's been doing quite a few approaches in the 'toga, and she really likes it. The little one basically rattles around back in there. I think she's getting used to it. Having "your own door" is pretty neat, and an adjustable armrest.

We have done some IMC with it, not as much as I'd like, but it's been too cold and unreliable to do much right now. In the spring...

How's the Twinkie? I haven't seen it yet. Gotta get out there some time when you are there.

Jim
 
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