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image showing the 'engine' page of the ECAM display of an A320, with indications of fuel used, oil, presure, temperature and other info.

Is this image showing 18.5 liters or quart of engine oil? It is from an Airbus A320 with CFM 56-5B engines.

DeltaLima
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Hồng Văn Nguyễn
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1 Answers1

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The answer is actually in the image: Below "OIL", it says "QT", which according to the "Abbreviations" table under "General Information" in the A320 FCOM, means

Quart (US)

enter image description here

kevin
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  • Thanks You. You are great – Hồng Văn Nguyễn Sep 26 '18 at 08:56
  • Probably they use this unit because as it is close to liter (0.94), they don't have to change anything for the european market, except the label. – Legisey Sep 26 '18 at 13:12
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    @Legisey I think the European market also uses quarts, not liters. It wouldn't make sense for a European made plane which is used by airlines around the globe and potentially flies intercontinental with pilots from all over the globe to have separate displays for different markets, especially in the risky manner you describe where they only replace the unit but don't redo the calculations. – Nzall Sep 26 '18 at 13:31
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    A bigger question is why do they use US Quarts for oil? Or more broadly how have we ended up with such a mix of US and metric units (and possibly imperial for all I know). I was going to ask but it's too close to Why doesn't the aviation industry use SI units?, thoughg the accepted answer there states Non-SI is only used for altitude, distance and speed except in US and some other American countries. which doesn't seem to be the case here – Chris H Sep 26 '18 at 13:59
  • Yes. The capacity of tank for overflow oil is 20.1 quart. And why i uplift full oil, it only show 18.5. There are logical about it? – Hồng Văn Nguyễn Sep 26 '18 at 14:26
  • The ECAM engine oil quantity indication corresponds to the "useable" oil quantity in the engine oil system The difference between "total" and "useable" oil quantities is around 5 US quarts. – Power Plant Engineer Jun 15 '23 at 22:33