For some reason, it bothers me that an airliner can run out of fuel without the pilot being alerted well ahead of time. Planes don't have a fuel gauge?
What I find amazing is pilots have been flying planes for over 100 years here in the USA and now apparently American Airlines pilots can't fly without a handheld Gizmo and somehow this is supposed to be considered progress.
It makes you wonder if pilots are getting dumber?
Maybe instead of buying a Gizmo they should have paid for more flying lessons.
It had to do with politics, namely Canada's decision to be more progressive about fuel measurement than its uncouth big brother to the south.
From the Wikipedia:
The subsequent investigation revealed a combination of company failures and a chain of human errors that defeated built-in safeguards. Fuel loading was miscalculated due to a misunderstanding of the recently adopted metric system which replaced the imperial system.