747 over northern part of Holland yesterday

[PGA]

Yesterday a friend of mine spotted a 747 circling over the northen parts of the netherlands for at least 50 mins, roughly between 7.30pm and 8.30pm GMT, or 8.30pm and 9.30pm Local The aircraft appeared to be dumping fuel, at least there were two "contrails" visible at the wing tips. Altitude was estimated to be around 15000ft. The last spotted direction was approximately west. The aircraft color was unknown, but tought to be silver, although I think that might have been the influence of the sun. Does anybody know what exactly was going on.

[Phoenix_X]

A serious answer -- I know it's not all that dark around here at 8.30pm.

It's very unlikely that it was dumping fuel, as that's not done while flying in circles but in straight lines of 45 kilometres or more (to prevent flying through your own fuel). Also, the northern part of the Netherlands is not the designated fuel dumping zone (that's to the west over the sea, in lines north-south-north).

What it probably was, was a 747 holding at lower speeds. As it needs a steeper angle for the wings to fly level at slower speeds, there's more turbulence (called a wing vortex) around it's wingtips. In some weather conditions this will cause contrails to form around them.

Why for 50 minutes? Anyone's guess. It could've been busy at Schiphol, it could have been something else they wanted to sort out.

As for the color -- the underside of nearly all aircraft out there is white, so it's anyone's guess which company it was.

I can understand the jokes about chemtrails, but is it so hard to answer someone's serious question seriously?

[Sonic Zepplin]

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