Fueled

It's been a tough few days.   I had a tailwheel flight this morning down in Westfield, had lunch, and then had to meet with the NTSB about the accident.  He asked me quite a few questions about what I saw, what we did, the training we received, how the instructor seemed, etc.  And then my next two flights of the day were at Kokomo, and from the pattern at Kokomo I could see the wreckage of the Aerostar in the field just about 3 miles away.  I flew over the top of it once, and could look over and see the end of Runway 5 just right there.  He was so close.  A little more energy and he should have been able to land safely in the field instead of stalling out and dropping in.  A little closer to the airport before he started having problems and he might have been able to glide in. 

So, now that it's coming out anyway all over, I might as well spell it out.  We learned this within an hour of when he crashed, but had to keep it to ourselves.  The line boy put Jet A in the Aerostar instead of 100LL.  He says he asked Dan (pilot) if he needed Jet A and that Dan said yes.  Dan was also there when the Jet A truck pulled up.  The line boy had trouble getting the fuel in, because the Jet A nozzles are too big to go in 100LL fuel tanks.  But he's new, and he didn't know that.  He didn't see the placard on the wing that says "AVGAS ONLY".  And he filled the airplane with Jet A.  Per the normal, it ran fine long enough to get off the ground and a few miles away.   A man with a wife and two kids died.  A young college kid getting paid $11/hour has to live with knowing that a mistake cost the life of a man.  It wasn't either person's 100% fault, I don't think, but that doesn't make it any easier for either one of them.  And it's so easy to have happen, and so hard to detect once it does.  And landing out with two dead engines isn't super easy either.  There will be lawsuits.  The whole thing makes me queasy.  Actually, physically queasy.  Steve didn't really see him other than briefly right at the end before he left, and he's not letting it bother him as much.  I'm having a little harder time with it, but I hope it'll get better after today.

The cleaning folks didn't clean the house very well today, didn't seem to clean our bathroom hardly at all.  I took pictures, and Steve sent them on, and hopefully the company will make it right.  We don't pay money to have other people NOT clean the house.

I've got a lot going on right now, a lot of T-6 training in other people's airplanes coming up, a lot of students, a lot of busy days.  I'm still feeling a little weird right now, but you just keep working and get through it.