Happy New Year everyone!

I wanted to post this right away because I had personal experience with this very issue.  The link below is a link to a FAA Special Airworthiness Information Bulletin.  It discusses resetting circuit breakers on general aviation aircraft.  The personal experience I had was during a Robinson R44 instruction flight, the auxiliary fuel pump light came on and the circuit breaker had popped open.  I reset the breaker.  For a short time, the breaker stayed in and the light went out.  Eventually the light came back on and the breaker popped again.

Fortunately, the R44 showed no other signs of trouble.  The engine was continuing to run smoothly and the sound of the engine remained constant.  All my engine gauges continued to run in their normal ranges.  These indications told me the engine driven fuel pump was working just fine and we would be able to make it home.  The emergency procedures in the R44 POH outline that if the auxiliary fuel pump light should come on in flight, and if no other indicators of a problem exist, such as a rough running engine, then land as soon as practical, which is exactly what we did.  The flight ended successfully.

The FAA bulletin outlines that repeated attempts to reset breakers can be catastrophic, as it can cause fires.  This is a good reminder for all of us that if we see a popped breaker, do not reset the breaker more than once.  If the breaker pops again, work through the problem and remember the emergency procedure and act accordingly.

The link is below…

https://www.faasafety.gov/files/notices/2009/Dec/SAIB_CE-10-11.pdf