First time seat belt warning on a British Airway flight

[GON]

Earlier after boarding a British Airway A321 neo flight, heard a seat belt warning I don't recall hearing before on a commercial flight.

Please keep your seat belt unbuckled until the plane has completed its refuling. I understand why this was announced, just not something I can ever remember hearing said on a commercial flight.

Captured a picture of the fueling, not good quality.

 

[ls1mike]

Never heard that one and on my last "Direct" flight we had to stop in Chicago to take on fuel because we had to use a short runway at Logan. We refueled with everyone on the plane.

 

[E365]

Related: Certain airlines/airplanes won’t allow any passengers onboard when maintenance is refilling the pilot’s oxygen tanks.

 

[Vil_Riker]

I've never experienced refueling while passengers are onboard. It makes sense why they would want a quicker escape.

 

[awguy]

And the main cabin door must remain open for easier egress.

 

[Kira]

we had to stop in Chicago to take on fuel because we had to use a short runway at Logan.

I understand planes can take off with less that a "full tank"; but what does that have to do with using the short runway at Logan?

 

[ls1mike]

I understand planes can take off with less that a "full tank"; but what does that have to do with using the short runway at Logan?

We couldn't load enough fuel to make it to Seattle. Plane would have been to heavy to take off from the short runway (Well that is what the said. Reason was due to construction). We landed in Chicago, taxied, opened the cabin door, took off trash and we watched them fill us up out the window. We were back in the air in about an hour.

My guess is someone miss calculated fuel and they wanted to get out of Logan. That was October 14th of this year.

 

[DuckRyder]

I understand planes can take off with less that a "full tank"; but what does that have to do with using the short runway at Logan?

Back in the day before they took the top of the mountain and extended the runway at STT Eastern flew L1011's in..

When leaving they could not fuel and did a maximum performance take off to clear the mountain and immediately landed in St Croix to fuel you would stay on the aircraft for fueling and i recall no warnings like this but it was quite a long time ago.

More recently Air Tran had to unload the aircraft using vans and ramp trucks to change a tire at BMI, then reload the same way but even that was a long time ago...

Any way back to your regularly scheduled program...

 

[pilottravis]

I understand planes can take off with less that a "full tank"; but what does that have to do with using the short runway at Logan?

Multiple factors go into making fuel decisions for aircraft. You can't just "top it off" and fill the seats like an SUV. Most aircraft you can fill the seats or the tanks but not both with some exceptions. If in fact a shorter runway than normally used for that route was necessary, the aircraft might not have had the performance with additional fuel to get off the ground within the runway length with safety margins built in. Same thing happens at "hot and high" airports all the time. As the temp and density altitude climb, aircraft takeoff performance declines significantly.

 

[Kira]

In addition to that:
One training aircraft was so old its prop had been "nick sanded" to the point where Summer take offs were effected.

 

[Astro14]

I understand planes can take off with less that a "full tank"; but what does that have to do with using the short runway at Logan?

Everything. Performance is calculated based on weight, temperature, wind direction, humidity (affects density) and pressure. On short runways, pounds matter.

It’s not that we “can” take off with less than a full tank, it’s more like we “almost never” take off with a full tank.

There is no good reason to add more gas than you need (need includes anticipated burn, taxi fuel, fuel to get to an alternate, fuel to change altitude for turbulence and an analyzed, data-driven amount of contingency fuel).

More weight in an airplane burns more fuel because it requires more lift, which creates more drag. It costs gas to carry gas. If we added an extra 10,000# of fuel in Hong Kong over the above calculation, we would land in LAX with roughly 6,000# more pounds.

That is a complete waste of 4,000# of fuel. We had to burn #4,000 more just because we added the extra #10,000.

Some airplanes (757) do really well on short runways. They can get airborne in a short distance at a reasonable weight. Some airplanes (737-900) cannot because of physical limitations like maximum fuselage angle.

 

[Astro14]

Earlier after boarding a British Airway A321 neo flight, heard a seat belt warning I don't recall hearing before on a commercial flight.

Please keep your seat belt unbuckled until the plane has completed its refuling. I understand why this was announced, just not something I can ever remember hearing said on a commercial flight.

Captured a picture of the fueling, not good quality.
View attachment 186412

The rules on fueling airplanes with passengers on board include the ability to egress. A jet bridge MUST be hooked up and the cabin door left open, so, yeah, don’t put your belt on makes perfect sense. We rarely fuel with passengers on board.