Fuel Leak At 35,000ft!

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An airman on a flight between Chicago and Japan has been hailed a hero after spotting a fuel leak that could have taken out the whole flight.

Sgt Bartek Bachleda first spotted the leak during takeoff from his seat over the wing, and with his airplane experience knew to keep an eye on it as the flight began, Bachleda’s job is to fuel planes so he knew just how potentially life threatening the amount of fuel they were losing was.

At first crew on the plane didn’t believe his warnings, so he filmed it and showed it to a stewardess who raised the alarm and brought out one of the pilots to look at the situation, the captain confirmed that his crew had been trying to find out how they were losing over 6000lbs of fuel every hour in addition to their standard consumption.

After the warning the captain immediately made an announcement that he would be turning around and landing in San Francisco. As the 300+ passengers got off the plane they all thanked Sgt Bachleda for saving their lives – without his vigilance the flight would never have landed in Japan.

Don’t it just make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside?

Posted on May 24, 2009 | Filed Under Life