And of course, adding a little extra just in case of a diversion or emergency. By not carrying more fuel than is needed for the trip, airlines can save vast amounts of money as they are not operating with unnecessary weight. The best place to do this on modern passenger planes is to store the fuel in the wings. The seating arrangement is also a factor, as we have found out with the Airbus Aneo and Aneo. Under certain circumstances, both planes tend to pull their nose up after certain severe maneuvers.
To compensate for this, Lufthansa now blocks the sale of the last row of seats on this aircraft. Airlines also have loadmasters who decide where cargo is placed based on volume and weight. More serious causes might include structural damage. If spotted in time, a fuel imbalance is nothing to be alarmed about and can be easily rectified by the crew.
To rebalance the tanks manually, only fuel from the heavier side is used until the balance is restored. Large and dramatic imbalances however are cause for concern and can be the sign of a fuel leak. Most crews will conduct regular fuel consumption checks throughout the flight to actively monitor this. It is no secret that fuel is extremely flammable, and with many electrical and heat-producing components onboard, placing fuel in the wings has the added benefit of keeping these fire risks further away from passengers in the event of ignition or explosion.
When it comes to handling aircraft fires, time is money and pilots are urged to get the aircraft on the ground ASAP to increase the chance of survival. As many firefighters will iterate, flames are only part of the threats associated with fuel-fed fires.
Fire safety legislation is built around survival time. This is measured in post-crash survivability, ie the time available for passenger evacuation.
Fuel tank materials must be able to withstand flames for 5 minutes without burning through. This is approximate the same time it takes to boil an egg. This may seem like a scarily small window to escape, but crews are trained to evacuate all passengers within 90 seconds.
A full A even managed to do this in 78 seconds. So 5 minutes would be sufficient to evacuate 3 times over. Fires and fumes in the wings are easier to isolate and with the source outside of the fuselage, there is less chance of smoke entering the cockpit or the cabin. Most wings are made of extremely fire-resistant aluminium. The material can withstand fire for 5 minutes and it dissipates heat, preventing hotspots from occurring and minimising the risk of explosions.
Additionally it allows the wing to maintain its load-bearing ability, delaying burn-through or wing collapse until after evacuation is complete. Fires starting in the wings are also easier to spot when you have over people looking out of the windows trying to get that perfect instagram shot.
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Where airplane fuel tanks are located? Jan 20 Integral fuel tanks. Rigid removable fuel tank. Bladder fuel tanks. Drop fuel tanks. Conformal fuel tank. Previous Previous post: Wingtips, winglets and some more about wings Next Next post: How is jet engine maintenance done?
Related Posts. Here are some pictures of the tanks being resealed. They are notorious for needing a reseal every now and again but they do save in weight. Modern composite structures often don't lend to this design as jet fuel or avgas and composites don't really mix.
Here is a nice cutaway of the A to show where the tanks are. It should be noted that you can generally pump fuel between the tanks however care must be taken when this is done because it can greatly effect the CG. This podcast has some really interesting information on how complex it was to manage the fuel weight on the Concorde and how it needed to be pumped around the tanks during various phases of the flight just to keep the plane stable.
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