With a growing number of light aircraft taking on jet-A instead of avgas—from a diesel-powered Cessna 172 to the single-engine Cirrus VisionJet—a prudent pilot stays on guard to supervise fueling if at all possible. But anecdotally speaking, many of us have operated under the impression that misfuelling a piston airplane burning 100LL with jet fuel is tough to do, given the difference in filler-neck sizes and pump-nozzle diameters.
Accident Analysis Compels Pilots to Check Fuel
Key Takeaways:
- Misfueling piston aircraft with jet fuel poses a severe, often fatal, risk, as demonstrated by an accident where an FBO's jet fuel truck had an incorrectly sized nozzle that allowed it to fit an avgas filler port.
- Detecting jet fuel contamination in avgas is challenging because the fuels mix well, making visual or olfactory checks in a fuel sample unreliable.
- Pilots can use practical field tests, such as the paper evaporation test or the GATS fuel straining jar method, to identify the presence of jet fuel in a sample.
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