At a recent aviation conference, legendary test pilot Bob Hoover was a guest speaker. He moves a little slower than he did as a test pilot but his wit and story-telling still came through. Among pilots, safety and learning are prominent themes, and Bob used the occasion to tell a story about safety and learning.
Seems years ago piston and turbine aircraft had the same size fuel hoses and a young line boy accidentally serviced his piston engine aircraft with jet fuel. This is similar to pumping diesel into a standard, combustion engine – It’ll run for a while but the the engine will die. Worse, diesel fuel can actually hurt engine components. It’s similar in airplanes.
In Bob’s case, he had enough fuel in the fuel lines to taxi out, depart and climb to almost 100 feet when the jet fuel caused his engines to quit. The airport (Brown Field outside San Diego) is surrounded with mountains which are probably the worst emergency landing locations imaginable. Bob drew on his skills and landed uphill, stalling right at touchdown, and pilot and passengers emerged with nothing more than scratches. Amazing!
Later, after he returned to the airport and found the extremely red-faced line boy. He looked at him and said “Tomorrow I’ll be back to fly and I’ll need my aircraft serviced. And when I do, I want only one person servicing my aircraft. And that person is you.”
Bob knew that of all the line boys at Brown Field, only one was guaranteed to have learned that jet fuel in a piston engine was something to be avoided.







