A Garuda Indonesia flight was grounded after it suffered a fuel leak on the runway while departing from Jakarta’s Soekarno–Hatta International Airport (CGK).
The incident occurred on August 24, 2024. Flight GA 174 was preparing to depart Jakarta for Sultan Syarif Kasim II International Airport (PKU) in Pekanbaru at approximately 11:50 local time.
Garuda Indonesia CEO Irfan Setiaputra told media outlets that during a pre-takeoff routine safety procedure, the pilot in command discovered that the B737-800, with registration PK-GFW, had fuel leakage issues. The flight crew then decided to return the aircraft to the apron for a full inspection.
Meanwhile, one of the 135 passengers on the flight managed to capture video footage of the fuel leak.
The video shows fuel leaking out of the aircraft’s wing while moving. Indonesian singer and songwriter Kunto Aji uploaded and shared the clip on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter), which now has over 2.7 million views.
“My life was just saved, thank God I still have time, it was discovered, turned back but didn’t fly. This is so scary,” Aji wrote on X.
All passengers were rebooked on a different aircraft that departed Jakarta at 14:00 local time.
4 comments
The fuel is coming from a surge tank overflow and likely caused by a full fuel load and fluid expansion while it sat on a hot ramp. It’s there for a reason, so that the wing doesn’t expand under fluid pressure and this publication should know that.
Joe I agree with you. If one looks at a video and watches the flow of the fuel leaking from the beginning it’s a fairy consistent flow and seems to abate some just as the aircraft crosses a concrete expansion on the tarmac the overflow briefly gets worse then immediately thereafter the flow returns to its slower rate or slows. From what I also seen, it also appears that the fuel overflow lessens to an almost complete stop just as the video was about to end.
Just in general population doesn’t understand these aircraft are extremely complex and have redundancies for almost everything, it can be an extremely scary for passengers. Then on top of that with so much bad press and however now being a Boeing it automatically instills fear regardless of the planes age or specific type.
It’s sad in my opinion just how much negative press is given to one manufacturer but very very little is reported on other manufacturers. In fact I’ve not seen many articles written about Cathay’s Airlines grounding many of its A350’s for fuel line leaks/degeneration of their RR engines. However they, the airline’s mechanics found the issue fairly fast and as the parts are available and installed they’re returning the affected aircraft back to service.
There has to be a better way to deal with fuel tank pressure than letting that much fuel pour out onto the ground.
Thank GOD