Originally Posted by
wetbehindear
SLF here, so please hold your fire.
What about 2 degrees down slope to keep fuel leaks away from terminal. Does it not help?
Yes, if that is the case, it would help. But again, the problem was discovered when there were options:
Option 1: Press on, and assume that we can push the plane back by hand, even though, we have never done this before, we don't have procedures in place for doing it, we don't know how many people it would take, we don't know if we will be able to muster enough people and we're not 100 percent sure that we will be able to do it at all.
Option 2: Turn around, put the passengers on a different airplane which we *know* can be disembarked, boarded and pushed back at the destination, safely and certainly, using the standard procedures and equipment we use every day on a normal basis.
Option 1 has a lot of question marks. Option 2 does not. I'm not sure that it would be all that smart to choose option 1 over option 2 purely for economic reasons.