Originally posted by Gordon P
We even had a passenger jet fall out of the sky due to this type of confusion.
Yes, I remember that particular incident. I believe the pilot asked for X number of gallons of fuel and meant english gallons which the ground crew thought was imperial gallons and converted to kilograms. The upshot was that the aircraft was underfueled with the pilot figuring fuel burn in lbs per hour and estimated his fuel load based on english instead of imperial gallons. The aircraft was not lost however. Both engines (767) went into fuel starvation but the captain happened to be a trained and experienced glider pilot and managed over a 100 mile glide to safe landing at an airfield.