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But that podcast gets the story horribly wrong. It wasn't a metric-to-imperial conversion error; it was a metric-to-metric conversion error ... The pilots and g

But that podcast gets the story horribly wrong. It wasn't a metric-to-imperial conversion error; it was a metric-to-metric conversion error ... The pilots and ground crew had to convert from litres to kilograms and made a mistake by using the wrong conversion factor (they used pounds to kilograms if I recall correctly). It's crazy that he brings an "expert" on to the show and they still get it wrong.

stephen_g 4y ago
The Wikipedia article on it says they accidentally used the pounds/litre conversion factor instead of the kilograms/litre one.
- kortilla 4y ago
  Yes, that’s an error converting metric to metric by accidentally using an imperial/metric pair.
jimmySixDOF 4y ago
In defense of Tim and his scrupulous due diligence, the podcast is very clear wrt to the issue but perhaps the precision of my language was less so on examination I should have called it an "imperial vs metric" conversion error as in one of substitution not one of the math involved which my language allowed you to assume I was talking about. Not sure if it rises to the level of getting the story horribly wrong but you are entitled to an opinion.
- kingofpandora 4y ago
  I listened to the episode (a while ago, not when I saw your post), and I'm 90% sure they stated quite explicitly that "they made a mistake converting between imperial and metric and only filled up half the tank". I'm going to allow some possibility that I got it horribly wrong and the podcast did, in fact, get it right, but I don't believe that's the case.
  - jimmySixDOF 4y ago
    More to do justice to the story and its twists and turns this is courtesy of an AI transcription running on my podcast player (Snipd) : >This story is a bit like an onion. It's got layer er on the most superficial level, that sort of papery outer layer of the story, if you like. Why did this plane have too little fuel? The very simple reading is Speaker 1 They had a unit conversion error. So the people who were meant to be fueling the aircraft saw a number. They assumed it was pounds of fuel, when in fact, it was kilograms of fuel. And the reason they're even doing this in mass because if you fill up a car, you don't put the fuel in by mass, you do it by volume. Volume changes based on the ambient temperature. As things warm up, they tend to expand if they cool down, they tend to shrink. And if you're flying in aircraft, it's important you have the amount of fuel you're supposed to have. And so they made sure, instead of using the straightforward volume, they were going to use mass instead. And sadly, it was that attempt for extra precision that opened up the door for tis unit conversion era. ... >Speaker 1 And it was even obscured by one layer, because when they were doing the calculations, they weren't actually doing it in terms of the direct mass. They were using something called the specific gravity, which is tha cod measure of the density of the fuel. And so they used that to get back to the volume that they then had to put into the plane. And because there was this extra one layer of an opaque bit of putting it into a slightly different way of looking at it. They didn't realize that the units behind the specific gravity were based on kilograms, Speaker 2 And they assumed that they were based the old weigh on pounds.

stephen_g 4y ago

The Wikipedia article on it says they accidentally used the pounds/litre conversion factor instead of the kilograms/litre one.

kortilla 4y ago
Yes, that’s an error converting metric to metric by accidentally using an imperial/metric pair.

jimmySixDOF 4y ago

In defense of Tim and his scrupulous due diligence, the podcast is very clear wrt to the issue but perhaps the precision of my language was less so on examination I should have called it an "imperial vs metric" conversion error as in one of substitution not one of the math involved which my language allowed you to assume I was talking about. Not sure if it rises to the level of getting the story horribly wrong but you are entitled to an opinion.

kingofpandora 4y ago
I listened to the episode (a while ago, not when I saw your post), and I'm 90% sure they stated quite explicitly that "they made a mistake converting between imperial and metric and only filled up half the tank". I'm going to allow some possibility that I got it horribly wrong and the podcast did, in fact, get it right, but I don't believe that's the case.
- jimmySixDOF 4y ago
  More to do justice to the story and its twists and turns this is courtesy of an AI transcription running on my podcast player (Snipd) : >This story is a bit like an onion. It's got layer er on the most superficial level, that sort of papery outer layer of the story, if you like. Why did this plane have too little fuel? The very simple reading is Speaker 1 They had a unit conversion error. So the people who were meant to be fueling the aircraft saw a number. They assumed it was pounds of fuel, when in fact, it was kilograms of fuel. And the reason they're even doing this in mass because if you fill up a car, you don't put the fuel in by mass, you do it by volume. Volume changes based on the ambient temperature. As things warm up, they tend to expand if they cool down, they tend to shrink. And if you're flying in aircraft, it's important you have the amount of fuel you're supposed to have. And so they made sure, instead of using the straightforward volume, they were going to use mass instead. And sadly, it was that attempt for extra precision that opened up the door for tis unit conversion era. ... >Speaker 1 And it was even obscured by one layer, because when they were doing the calculations, they weren't actually doing it in terms of the direct mass. They were using something called the specific gravity, which is tha cod measure of the density of the fuel. And so they used that to get back to the volume that they then had to put into the plane. And because there was this extra one layer of an opaque bit of putting it into a slightly different way of looking at it. They didn't realize that the units behind the specific gravity were based on kilograms, Speaker 2 And they assumed that they were based the old weigh on pounds.