I have seized the opportunity on this thread to make my first post on PPRuNe. I don't want to hijack the thread, my question simply ties in with the OP's question.
Anyway, I have been reading this site now for about 3 months and I love it. I hate flying but I'm in love with all things "flying"....go figure. My wife has a straight jacket picked out for me already
My question is the following. A while back we were on a flight on Macau Air from Macau to Seoul, Korea. About 1.5 hours into the flight (3 hour total, so about halfway) the Captain informed us that we had to turn back because we lost our weather radar. I'm aware that an airline pilot cannot wilfully fly into a storm so would that be the reason for us having to turn back? We were delayed about 2 hours even before boarding so it could perhaps have been that the problem was evident even before we took off? Is it normal to turn back because of a weather radar problem?
When we got to Macau we had to circle for about 50 minutes. Would that have been to burn fuel before landing, dumping fuel because there may have been something else going on? It seems that if we had already flow 3 hours into a 3 hour flight we should have been pretty close to not having much fuel left?
Thanks in advance and apologies again for posting on an existing thread.