Yet another emergency at EDI today;
BBC NEWS | Scotland | Edinburgh, East and Fife | Emergency forces Boeing to land
I wonder why they chose to divert to EDI? It's a bit off-track for that flight. I guess it must have been about 10W or perhaps further out over the pond when it had to turn back (assuming it left LGW on time). I hope the sick passenger is okay.
Looking at the safety side of incidents like this, if an aircraft wasn't able to dump fuel (many can't) and was well above the maximum landing weight, would a captain risk damage to the airframe and risk possible injury to the other passengers by performing a dangerously overweight landing (if there is such a thing?) or would they burn-off the fuel before landing and risk the life of the person suffering the medical emergency? It's not a decision I'd like to be faced with but, if overweight landings are dangerous, I think I would follow Spok's logic - the needs of the many outwiegh the needs of the one.
How dangerous are over-weight landings? Obviously the approach speed will be much higher, the undercarriage could take a heavier hit and there's far more weight to bring to a halt.
Is there a lot of paperwork to complete and checks to be undertaken after an overweight landing? Is it a hangar job or just a line check.
In this case they landed at 13:30 and took off again at 15:30 so it must have been an uneventful (less then MLW?) landing. I'm guessing that they must have dumped 10 or 20 tonnes of fuel on the way to EDI to get below MLW?