Another idea discussed during the hearings was reducing the amount of wiring in tanks and eliminating the fuel quantity gauges used on the 747.

There was also speculation during the flight that fuel sensors had malfunctioned, providing false information on fuel quantities.

While these older systems provided accurate fuel quantity and injection timing control, they were limited by several factors:

A drawback to the tanks was that there was no means of measuring remaining fuel quantity within the cells.

The two indicators on top reported fuel pressure and fuel quantity.

Many airlines request that fuel quantities be rounded to a multiple of 10 or 100 units.

The fuel pumps and the equipment to measure fuel quantity are in the rear bay.

Likewise, suspect parts of the fuel quantity indicating system are missing.

All other aspects (fuel quantity, aircraft weight, runway length, etc.) use metric.

The increased thrust gave the Tomcat a better than 1:1 thrust-to-weight ratio at low fuel quantities.