There was a massive fuel spill at Dallas – Fort Worth while gassing up an American regional jet on Saturday. It was the classic ‘let’s unscrew the pressurized thing and see what happens’ approach. Bro didn’t refuel the plane—he refueled the entire ramp.
On the bright side, that ramp’s never looked so clean or so moisturized.
This is how the fuel leak started pic.twitter.com/mGmLwXfWR1
— aircraftmaintenancengineer (@airmainengineer) October 11, 2025
American Eagle jet's refueling turned into a spill nightmare on 11 Oct at DFW International Airport ✈️. pic.twitter.com/gsf0DwtwY2
— Fahad Naim (@Fahadnaimb) October 11, 2025
♂️ pic.twitter.com/ne2ZaOmaaq
— aircraftmaintenancengineer (@airmainengineer) October 11, 2025
(EPA types furiously.) This went so wrong the entire airport might qualify as a wetland now.
This likely flies in the face of “not spending a dollar that we don’t have to”.
he was moving pretty slow for fuel spraying all over everywhere
There it is. That looks expensive. I mean, explosive. Yikes.
Safety first. This is just one more reason that ramp workers should refrain from smoking when refueling an aircraft.
If it’d been Florida Man doing this he would have been smoking while refueling.
This is what happens when you do not have good safety procedures in place.
Remember the old days when there was smoking on the tarmac
@Gary – Recently my comments are getting filtered out. For years they just appeared after I commented. I don’t believe I did anything very untoward. Is there a way to address this?
Yikes. This almost looked like a disgruntled employee who quit on the spot.
@Christian — No worries, not just you. Looks to be a caching issue causing an 5-10 minute delay for comments to be posted.
He just sauntered away as if nothing was happening. Weird.
@Christian — It’s all of us (and has been going on for a few weeks); if you click ‘POST COMMENT’ and it refreshes to the top of the page, it should eventually appear, maybe within a few minutes.
@Easy victor — Less of a ‘saunter’ and more of a ‘sashay’…
@Tim I guess they’re trained not to run, make deliberate moves at a safe speed if something goes wrong. I have no clue though.
@Christian yes, the comments issue is a bit frustrating. I almost thought I was banned from here for some reason until I went back to look at an old pay and lo and behold, all my comments are there.
Hmm. Didn’t these guys just receive a raise? I guess you don’t always get what you pay for.
@Maryland — Apparently, that guy’s check got ‘lost in the mail…’ (some real ‘not my job’-energy.)
@1990. Guess the old ” left-y loose-y, right-y tight-y,” doesn’t work on this valve!
An obvious DEI hire
Pretty sure he got point blank blast of pressurized jet fuel to the mouth/eyes/nose/entire face and that why hes walking away, cuz he can’t do anything else at the moment. PPE is important.
What is dangling down from the fueling port after the spill starts? Is it possible this was an equipment failure in the refueling line? The refueling port is typically a fixed port on the wing. Not a dangling hose. Also, if you watch closely, the refueler took a shot of jet fuel directly to the eyes. There’s more going on here than meets a naive eye.
@David R. Miller
In the grand scheme of the airline industry from ATC, Pilots, Engineers, Mechanics, Etc… I think, let me check, Gas Station Attendant is pretty low level. Maybe not Scrub the Potty low but entry level, yeah. And considering black people can have jobs too i’m wondering what job a black guy can have that you wouldn’t call DEI? Not saying this fellow was competent, just that im not sure we can assume the hiring agent was like “We need more black guys pumping gas, sorry white dude.”
I didn’t know that AA does it’s own fueling in DFW. They use vendors everywhere else I think.
@D you are correct about an equipment failure. It appears that the coupling at the end of the fuel hose broke. Look at the way the hose is moving around.
@steph airline personnel do not use their own personnel to refuel airplanes. It is all contract labor.
Gary hasn’t fessed up but I saw this another site.
I think they are running comments through an AI “supervisor” which explains the lag in the comments being posted.
I don’t think the rules have changed but the “no-go” topics are getting caught.
Tim,
your dedication to ensuring Gary can’t repost something without public notice is endearing.
Except that he links to two different twitter accounts on the topic.
What do you want him to fess up to? That he didn’t take the video live at DFW?
Your very low-quality trolling really goes to new depths of low every time you post.
Refueler here (‘hot’ refueler, pumping JP4 into running helicopters while on mission). Ah, the good ole days. That hose had to fail somewhere. If the connection came loose the flow automatically stops, I bet the hose broke. JP8 is ‘safer’ than the old -4, but yeah, he walked away cause it ain’t just wiping water out of your eyes.
Work on aircraft for a living. First biggest myth that Jet fuel can be ignited by a cig. Simply not possible. Open flame sure the vapors.
Also jet fuel leaking and jet fuel jettison happens much more then you think. Plane comes back to land from an aborted launch its to heavy to land. They dump the fuel in the atmosphere. Common practice globally.
Today’s society is full of people with fancy vocabularies without any basic knowledge of how things work. Everyone’s conceptual then you wonder why we are in the state we are. Its pathetic.
@Alexander Castleberry — Yeah, @David R. Miller is just a bigot. This error was not because of race (or gender, or partisanship, or anything about any group of people.) Someone messes up, and it’s a miracle this wasn’t worse than it already is.
At least someone gets that thing can break and it is not the worker’s fault. I have dealt with large spills before and it is not fun.
@jns — Good point. Thank you. Sadly, at least on ‘the internet,’ some folks are so quick to punch-down workers. Like, even if that guy made an error, mistakes do happen, and hopefully some lessons are learned from this so similar incidents do not occur. (Or, ignore that noise, blame his race! /s)
took too long for someone, anyone, to hit the emergency shut off switch. the fueler is using his phone around a fuel spill of that size?
lucky no sparks were set off.
new procedure: while fueling, one person needs to be within arms reach of emergency shut off valve at all times while pumping is active.