We've all seen people forget to close the fuel cap, but...

Fratton Fred

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/article.html?Flight_attendant_shrugs_off_fuel_leak&in_article_id=669380&in_page_id=34

When Bartek Bachleda spotted fuel pouring from the wing of his holiday flight, he did what anyone would do and pointed it out to the crew.
But the flight attendant shrugged off the US air force sergeant's concerns – until he showed her a video he had taken of the leak.

By the time he got her attention, the aircraft had lost more than 2,700kg (6,000lb) of fuel.

diverdriver

It's happened to me twice now, once definitely not my fault and the other a maybe. That is losing the fuel cap in flight. No fuel departed the aircraft but there was a strange whistling noise.:o

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I imagine the flight crew would have picked up the problem while checking their expected fuel burn rates (if not the computer).

It's usually up to the f/o to do regular calculations of fuel burn per time airborne.

Media hyping up the situation again me thinks.

*Kol*

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I imagine the flight crew would have picked up the problem while checking their expected fuel burn rates (if not the computer).

It's usually up to the f/o to do regular calculations of fuel burn per time airborne.

Media hyping up the situation again me thinks.

They would have had a visible imbalance o the indication if they lost that much fuel. They may even have got a caution light depending on the aircraft.

Foggy43

The story seems to have some problems. ORD to NRT which would route over Alaska, diverts to SFO?

Mr Benevolent

Looks like that fuel is coming out of the jettison nozzle.

Manic Moran

From the slightly more detailed version of the story courtesy of the military, explaining two of the issues identified.

The captain came from the cockpit to where Bachleda was sitting to see the leak and view the video footage. Bachleda said the captain and the crew were trying to figure out how the aircraft was losing 6,000 pounds of fuel an hour and then they knew exactly what was going on.

The captain made a mid-air announcement the flight would be diverted back to Chicago, but then changed it to San Francisco so passengers could catch the only existing flight to Narita airport.

NTM