This morning in RDU there was a GoJet who was sitting in the runup pad with its lights left on (while dark out, facing oncoming taxiing aircraft).

Then came the absurdity:
After sitting there for a while they asked ground if they could taxi around the airport making all right turns in order to assist with fuel crossfeeding. I have never heard of anything so ridiculous.

I was just imagining being a paying passenger on this flight. Wow.

Ground said that they could send them to a pad where they would spin around in 360s as long as they wanted. They responded "sure sounds great".

A few questions
1) Why did they even consider this?
2) How the he!! did they explain this to passengers?
3) Why did the Captain decide to leave the gate with such an imbalance? Did he have any backbone to just have the fueler fix the problem, or to call maintenance and have them deal with the issue?

Pretty embarrassing to the piloting profession. Not trying to monday morning quarterback but I wouldn't have left the gate and put passengers in such an awkward strange situation...."spinning around on a taxiway due to a fuel problem."

 

What makes you certain there were passengers on board or even pilots for that matter? Any chance it was a couple of mechanics doing their job?

 

1) I could see passengers through the window
2) I could see pilots through their window

 

...and ground was asking how long until they were ready for takeoff.

 

That happened to me years ago as an FO on a Saab in FWA. Capt locked the brake and spun several times with the cross flow open. No PA announcement or anything. Ground asked if there were people on the airplane. Embarrassing wasn't even half of it.

 

That's what happens when you don't do the receiving checklist. He was mis-fueled at the gate, no checklist, and they caught it too late.

 

So assuming the xflow was deferred, and they were trying to do a gravity crossflow by throwing fuel around, our MEL states "Gravity crossflow shall not be used for ground/taxi operations."

Now lets assume it was working, why didn't they just start the other engine and then shut down the engine on the low side and burn fuel that way? Seems like some people don't understand systems a little bit and felt like making up their own procedures.

I also know for a fact that they CAN defuel in RDU.

 

Used to be standard practice on the metro. No pumps to crossflow. Of course with boxes not pax.

 

Or look at your EICAS caution messages!

 

On the CRJ 700 you have to shut both fuel boost pumps during single engine taxi, or you get a large fuel imbalance. Maybe they forgot this and thought gravity cross flow would fix it faster. And also on all CRJs you can't sit more than 10 minutes with your lights on for cooling purposes. Sounds like these guys aren't too up on their systems knowledge. But hey, all DAL cares about is cheap feed...