Reality Trumps Myth in Assessing Fuel Quality Issues

摘要

Technical presentations at last month's IATA Fuel Forum in Singapore highlighted recent breaches in fuel handling procedures, inadvertently putting the spotlight on a new breed of players entering the airline fueling market. That attention may be misplaced, however, since none of the recent fuel contamination incidents have involved new or recent entrants (JFI May16,p1). The high-profile crash-landings of Cathay Pacific and British Airways jets have been traced to lapses in fuel handling protocols at the airport level. Fuel contamination in Israel apparently occurred in a pipeline from the Haifa refinery to Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv (JFI May23,p3). But further down the supply chain, technical problems have multiplied in lock-step with the rising volume of jet fuel that is traded around the world. The prevailing myth suggests that without refineries of their own, these pure trading companies have stretched the supply chain beyond what is practicable. They have ostensibly added new complexities to the fueling process through greater use of shipping and bulk storage, including the use of tankers for floating storage in Europe.