I had something similar happen when I was a Student Naval Aviator during a hot-pit evolution. (A flight where you fly about a 1.1 hr flight with an instructor then return to base so that the instructor can hop our while they refuel the plane with the engines running (hence "hot-pit") for your subsequent solo practice flight.) During the refueling the ground crew checks a strainer assembly under the plane (out of pilot view) and the chap doing it for me left the cap and cover off.

I took off trailing fuel. In the mirror of the canopy I could see it, but being a brain numb student thought, "what a neat contrail." Duh....

The tower soon called and let me know my status. I declared an emergency and then turned out over the water to dump my wing and wing tip fuel before landing. Student Duh #2 because the fuel was leaking from my center tank.

I managed to land but ran out of fuel taxing back to the squadron.

Bottom line: It's always the pilot's fault if you run out of fuel, no matter what the circumstances and so I spent a tense two weeks until a board cleared me of the incident and returned me to flight status.

BA was well served by its crew during this incident. Good on them.

Aileron roll. __^__ --v-- __^__


cheers,
scibard

P.S. Dave_C is right _ a reheat might have made things very hot indeed. Lucky that.