Units Was: Where is balance 282
IIRC, the Air Canada flight manual had a formula specifically to cover the case where the fuel gauges were suspect or inoperative, and it had been updated for the new metric units. Unfortunately, all they changed was the units and not the conversion factor. Consequently, when the fueling boss, pilot, and co-pilot did the calculation independently they all arrived at the same incorrect figure -- they had half the amount of fuel the flight required.
I think I've mentioned this pet project of mine before in this froup. The requirements of aeronautical navigation have perpetuated the continued existence of the nautical mile, and also the loveagesimal...
That the pilot managed to land the plane safely was nothing short of miraculous; even Boeing's test pilots had never tried a dead-stick landing in a B767 before. Thank $DEITY for the engineer who put a ram-air hydraulic pump on the plane despite the general belief at Boeing that it was "impossible" for an airliner to run out of fuel.
Amusingly, the crew that Air Canada sent by truck to Gimli to repair the plane and bring it home ran out of fuel on the way -- also blamed on the imperial-to-metric conversion.
I always liked nautical miles because it was easy to calculate distances given a set of coordinates in 'deg min sec' format -- one nautical mile is equal to one minute of...
S
-- Stephen Sprunk "Those people who think they know everything CCIE #3723 are a great annoyance to those of us who do." K5SSS --Isaac Asimov
Units Was: Where is balance 283
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