Would you notice if you pumped jet fuel?

What you might notice is moot - the story is from New Jersey, where self service gasoline is not permitted. The question would be whether the gas station attendant would know Jet A from unleaded... it's not a job that always attracts the sharpest knife in the drawer.

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This has happened several times. The fuel supplier put the wrong product in the wrong tank, at our fuel farm twice in 7 years. Somebody caught it before there was an incident. We've had them pump avgas in our jets fairly often. Reduces the TBO. The manufacturer, P&W and GE, both even has tables telling how much!! With all the smells, exhaust fumes, wind and jet blasts at a busy airport don't depend on smell or appearance to be sure you have 100LL, instead of a mixture of Jet A and 100. Taxi out and do a complete run-up, and hope any contaminated fuel hits before TO power is needed. Pay particular attention to any whitish smoke from your exhaust, if you can see it. Beyond that good luck, and know your supplier. Kerosene/JetA/ jet fuel is quite LOW octane. Around 50 or less if memory serves. Detonation, should be audible if you get much of it in your avgas.

A gas station near me once pumped water into cars, right after a heavy rain. Three blocks away there were eight or ten cars waiting to be towed. Jet fuel would do the same thing, the engines would just quit.

The gas station has to drain all of those cars and get them going again at their expense.

There have been a number of serious accidents involving pumping jet fuel into gasoline powered aircraft.

Both of the incidents I am thinking of involve DC-3's. On the DC-3, there is enough gasoline in the fuel lines and carb to take off and reach about 800 ft before the jet fuel hits the cylinders.

There was one incident in Cincinnati which involved fatalities, back in the mid-1980's.

There was one incident in Montreal in which the pilot was lucky, and had an open field in front of him as the engines quit. They had to pull the wings and truck the bird back to Dorval (YUL).

There was another incident, a bit different, called the Gimley Glider incident. You have probably heard of it. They pumped the correct fuel, but the pilot calculated gallons of fuel, and the truck pumped litres. Montreal to Vancouver, the engines quit near Winnipeg, and only by chance, the co-pilot flew out of nearby Gimley during or just after the war, and knew the airport. Trouble was, the strip had been converted to drag racing. There was a great scurry of cars and people when they realized that the bird was on final approach. They took out the nose wheel when they hit a guard rail. To my knowledge, that was the only damage.

About the odour of the fuel, At a service station, I am not that observant. I presume that the delivery truck puts gasoline in the gasoline storage, and diesel in the diesel storage. Maybe I should pay more attention.

BTW, when you see the delivery truck dropping fuel, wait for a little while. It takes an hour for the water to settle to the bottom of the tank in gasoline, and much longer in diesel.

Gasoline and diesel have very distinct odours. Jet is different. Jet has to function and remain fluid at very cold temperatures at high altitude. It is diluted with gasoline, so you might have trouble telling the difference with a sniff test..

I know summer diesel will plug a fuel filter at -20 degrees. Truckers come up from the south into Montreal in mid-winter, and stall in the middle of the expressways because their filters are blocked with parrafin. I made a mistake and stuck my tractor in the middle of a road one very cold winter day. Summer diesel and winter diesel are not the same. The oil companies also change the formula for your winter gasoline too.

When I am using portable containers, I ALWAYS do a sniff test first. Red for gas and yellow for diesel is the rule, but caution is called for. Portable containers are always a primary source of fuel contamination too.

With the vapor recovery systems in place at most major cities gas stations, it's doubtful that you would have smelled anything unusual from this mix. If anything, you might have caught a slight diesel fuel smell.

Would *I* notice? Yes. Having owned 4 jet engines (for ground related projects), I'm quite aware of what kerosene/jet fuel smells like.

Would *you* notice? I have no idea.

I think it comes down to believing that it is "what it says on the tin".

While I am sure that I too would notice a difference in the smell, filling a car is, for most of us, such a routine exercise that we give it almost no attention.

The nozzle goes well down inside the filler and you don't see what comes out. If you pick up the Premium Grade nozzle, that is what you expect to get and, unless there was something that really drew your attention to it, I suspect most people might not notice until it was too late.

i WOULD notice. i use gas cars, natural gas one right now. so i would definitely know the difference.

needless to say, jet fuel is a leftover from diesel production.

i could not possibly tell the difference between avgas and the car gasoline. i would tell the difference between gasoline and jet-a-1, be it in viscosity or in smell - but not before i already sprinkled some into the tank as one simply expects to get what you grab.

grabbing wrong hose, that's a whole different issue.

I would. Jet fuel smells very different, and it is more oily like diesel.