I was wondering if any aviator out there could answer that question. I'm pretty
sure it was just a convention for the movie and short story, but I figured
I'd ask anyway...just in case i fall asleep on a plane ride and wakeup and everyones gone...lol
I would imagine that the answer is maybe. Running the engines while connected to the fuel supply should create a vacuum in the fuel tanks as existing fuel is fed to the engines.
I kind of doubt that the vacuum would be strong enough to pull fuel from some underground fuel depot. Maybe if you managed to prime it all the way through the hose to the nozzle, but if the fuel line between plane and storage tank was empty, the low burn rate idling the engines on the ground wouldn't remove enough fuel volume in the tanks relative to the amount of empty space at atmospheric pressure in the fuel delivery system to create the vacuum needed to draw fuel.
if that kind of siphoning effect did work, with without priming, then youd only pull onboard what you burnt, rendering the exercise a bit pointless
share