Tristar dumps fuel at EDI

[pubsman]

"Military jet in emergency landing at Edinburgh Airport" but performs loops before doing so. See BBC report at:

BBC News - Military jet in emergency landing at Edinburgh Airport (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-14789042)

[green granite]

A whole Tri-star for one serviceman? Typical misuse of terms though.

[TheSmiter]

Breaking news ......... BBC News - Military jet in emergency landing at Edinburgh Airport (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-14789042)

The pilot was forced to fly in a loop above the city with its gear down in a bid to burn more fuel.Nice skills, sir :D. Handling emergencies with such panache. Surely not to be encouraged in the modern RAF.

[diginagain]

A whole Tri-star for one serviceman?

I sincerely hope that was a tongue-in-cheek remark, GG.

[Kluseau]

Have to say that this didn't look right (compared with normal movements at EDI) as it seemed to climb out from the airport and turn sharply to head east over southern Edinburgh. And then we met what appeared to be Lothian and Borders Fire Brigade's full complement of heavy duty and serious incident kit coming at speed round the Edinburgh bypass towards the airport. So pleased they got down safely.

[sisemen]

Once it was light enough, the plane landed at the airport at 13:00

Jeez. I thought that winter was bad enough in Jockland but dark at lunchtime in September???

[Self Loading Freight]

No flaps, I'm informed, so a rather nippy meeting with the tarmac followed by unseasonably warm brakes for the time of year...

R

[theredbarron]

Took off again about 45 minutes ago so couldnt have been a big fix. Probably just renewed the chewing gum :D

[Motleycallsign]

Getting Compassionate cases home when necessary is one thing the RAF does get right I'm pleased to say. Laying on an aircraft/helicopter as and when, or diverting en route not a problem.

[glhcarl]

Question:

Why did they have to do loops over the city with the gear down to burn off fuel, they could have just dumped fuel to get down to max landing weight?

No flap landing is not common but has been done more than once.

[MrBernoulli]

Getting Compassionate cases home when necessary is one thing the RAF does get right I'm pleased to say. Laying on an aircraft/helicopter as and when, or diverting en route not a problem. I wonder if this practise might become a problem once the A330 is well and truly esconced as the RAF's AT an AAR asset? Can anyone in-the-know offer an opinion on whether 'hours availability' could restrict Comp flights?

Why did they have to do loops over the city with the gear down to burn off fuel, they could have just dumped fuel to get down to max landing weight?Fuel dump system U/S?

[glhcarl]

Getting Compassionate cases home when necessary is one thing the RAF does get right I'm pleased to say. Laying on an aircraft/helicopter as and when, or diverting en route not a problem.

I agree! After 9-11 when all cilivian air traffic was on the ground the RAF offered to get me home, if the need arrived. Fortunatley the need did not arrive, but at least they offered.

[Sook]

Would they be able to dump fuel over land if it wasn't an emergency that threatened the aircraft if they didn't get the aircraft down straight away?

[BEagle]

Getting a 'compassionate' passenger to destination a.s.a.p. is one of those events in the AT/AAR world when everyone pulls together knowing that even a couple of minutes could make the difference between the passenger seeing their loved one alive or deceased.

I've no idea of the circumstances of this event, but if the TriStar arrived to make a normal landing only to find that the flaps, for example, wouldn't extend, then it might well be necessary to reduce weight to enable a flapless landing to be made. Putting the gear down would help to burn off a little quicker whilst checking the figures for a flapless landing, so that the fuel dump time needed would ultimately be shorter.

Routinely if it was necessary to dump down to flapless landing weight, one would find a suitable area to avoid disturbing the locals. But if that meant a longer delay for the compassionate patient, then I'd say to hell with it and dump at the minimum acceptable height to expedite matters... RAF crews aren't slaves to the QRH, unlike some airline people-tube drivers and are taught to make pragmatic judgments.

Anyway, being Jockistanis they were all probably out with buckets trying to catch the Avtur...;)

[fallmonk]

Out off curiosity why did the land at edin? ESP if they had time to burn fuel off?
I mean why not head to leuchars , Lossiemouth or Kinloss ? ie a R.A.F. Base ?

[TorqueOfTheDevil]

one of those events in the AT/AAR world when everyone pulls together


Try telling that to the SNCO mover in the Falklands a couple of years back. Grumpy unhelpful bastard at the best of times, failed to check the times properly of the flight from Rio to London so dispatched the aircraft from MPA too late to make the connection. Cue the poor sod who's trying to get home in a hurry having (nearly) 24 hours stuck in Brazil. But yes, the system is usually excellent.


why not head to leuchars , Lossiemouth or Kinloss ? ie a R.A.F. Base ?


Because the Comp case was trying to get to somewhere in southern Scotland/northern England, and bases in Fife/Moray are hours away?

[Tankertrashnav]

Puzzled about the questions about dumping fuel over the Jocks. Last time I looked Edinburgh was a few miles from the coast, so returning the fuel to the North Sea (whence it may have come) would seem to be the easy answer, so I assume there was a good reason not to use whatever fuel dump system the Tristar has.

Due to some cock-up we once took off from Marham for a 45 minute transit to Leuchars with a max 86,000 lbs in our Victor K1. Spent the whole transit from TOC all the way up to Leuchars dumping fuel through the pods to get down to max 25,000 landing fuel at Leuchars. Didnt like to think how much that lot cost.

[Old Fella]

Jeez, would love to have seen that. "Loops" over anywhere in a TriStar!! Did nobody notice the BBC report. All the conjecture regarding dumping of fuel is a bit of a nonsense. The report says that the problem became apparent at 12:30 and that it landed safely at 13:00, 30 minutes after encountering the problem. Probably spent time "orbiting", as distinct from "looping", with the gear down whilst endeavouring to extend the flaps. No where did I read that the aircraft actually made a flapless landing.

[Arm out the window]

The pilot was forced to fly in a loop above the city with its gear down in a bid to burn more fuel.

Great English skills from the BBC.

Not sure whose 'gear' they're referring to - the pilot, the plane or the city.

[MagnusP]

I could hear something fly over the city centre a couple of times just before lunch, and thought it seemed an odd route. Guess I should have gone out and looked.

[MadMurdock]

He was in the hold at EDN for around 30 mins at 5000' with gear down. He stated 80 POB and would be landing at around 180kts as unable to deploy any flaps, so brakes would be hot and requested to be met by fire crew as a precaution. After vacated and a quick inspection, continued taxying to block 33.

[Nomorefreetime]

why not head to leuchars , Lossiemouth or Kinloss ? ie a R.A.F. Base ?

Probably not the correct crash cat available, also lack of high rise pax steps

Try telling that to the SNCO mover in the Falklands a couple of years back

A SNCO mover is the sole person responsible for dispatching a flight out of the Falklands area. No one else is aware of times to meet flights, JCCC / JOC. Falklands Ops etc.

[matkat]

Cannot use Leuchars due no crash or adequate fire coverage

[Ron Manager]

A SNCO mover is the sole person responsible for dispatching a flight out of the Falklands area. No one else is aware of times to meet flights, JCCC / JOC. Falklands Ops etc.

Not the "sole" person, but the one responsible for booking the flights from South America and providing those times to the JOC et al so that correct departure times from MPN can be calculated; so if the wrong times are passed on the whole thing can fall down quite quickly.

[Nomorefreetime]

Ron

Unless it has changed, Having done 2 trips to Brazil escorting comps, and spending 4 months working in JABC down south. All comp flights were classified and booked by the comp cell in the UK and then backed up with a signal to the JOC down south. I was always told the timings by either JCCC or the JOC.

[Saintsman]

Getting Compassionate cases home when necessary is one thing the RAF does get right I'm pleased to say. Laying on an aircraft/helicopter as and when, or diverting en route not a problem.

I remember one such example in the 80s. An airman who came from the Falklands was flown home within 24 hours from Akrotiri to see his father before he died.

Coming back was another story though.

[BEagle]

From the aircrew perspective, compassionates are very rewarding! Cruise at max permitted, ask for as many directs as you can and explain the situation to the air traffickers.....

We once brought a chap back whose relative was on her last legs. Landed on RW26 at Brize, full reverse and firm braking to make the intersction and to hell with normal noise rules. Stopped on the waterfront, steps were all ready and the movers had a wagon sitting ready to go with its engine running. As soon as we'd stopped the ALM had the guy and his bag ready at the door; door open, steps up, DAMO rushed the chap into the wagon and over to a 32 Sqn 125 which had cranked up as we taxyed in. On board, start the second donk, take the intersection and it was taking-off before we'd parked and finished the shut down checks - the chap had been on the tarmac for less than 30 seconds! He made it before she passed away - job done!

And that's how we do that!

[jamesdevice]

a flight which always intrigued me. In the mid 1980's I met a chap (his parents ran the Bull Inn in Cavendish, Suffolk) who'd been flown out of the Falklands in a Hercules with an axe stuck in his head. He was a contractor working on MPA, and there'd been an argument over snoring in the dormitory, which ended up with another worker axing him while he was asleep. When I met him he seemed totally recovered.
The story as he knew it (I guess he wouldn't have been awake at the time) was of a low-level Hercules flight to Ascension, followed by a VC10 back to the UK.
Now my question - just how low would that Hercules have flown to reduce any risk of brain damage due to bleeding? It strikes me it must have been a heck of a flight
Sorry, not quite a "compassionate" flight, but close to it

[Karma022202]

James, the answer to your question is as low as safely possible. High altitude cerebral edema (HACE) is the end-stage of AMS (conversely AMS can be thought of as the mild form of HACE). When you have HACE, your brain swells and stops working properly.
HACE symptoms include a number of signs of mental functions failing: confusion, fatigue and weird behaviour. But the most reliable one is gait ataxia, and you can test it by walking heel to toe along a straight line on the ground. Healthy people can pass this test easily; anyone who has difficulty balancing while they do it is showing signs of HACE.
HACE is extremely serious, and you may only have a few hours to help someone with HACE. The main treatment for this is descent, but a person experiencing these symptoms will need significant help. Dexamethasone is one drug that can be used to relieve symptoms, but it is just a temporary bridge to give more time for descent.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

I remember, 1990 ish, a jag mate who was auth'ed to take a jet home from Deci when his wife went into labour unexpectedly, landed at Norwich, and arrived at the hospital before the mother-in-law who lived 4 miles away.
Also provided chauffeur service for one of our navs in a similar situation- 3:15 from phone call in Deci to bedside in North Yorkshire, and we brought a bent jet back too.

[Trim Stab]

We were laid up for the day in a coppice on a two-week LRRP exercise in Denmark when an RAF Puma suddenly landed right next to us.

"Yippee" we thought, here was the chance to "capture and destroy" an "enemy" aircraft. We pepper-potted out of the coppice blazing away with blanks and thunderflashes and within a couple of minutes had the protesting crew on the floor, trussed up and gagged, and the aircraft rigged with dummy demolition charges. We dragged the crew back into the coppice, tied them to some trees, nicked their ratpacks, then legged it as fast as we could to another coppice a few klicks away.

Once back under cover, we set up the HF radio and jubilantly fired off a sitrep giving the location of the "destroyed" enemy helicopter and crew. We settled down to get a brew on and scoff all their chocolate, and after a few minutes the reply came back - loosely decrypted as "you f*cking cnuts". It turned out that the Puma had come to compassionately evacuate our Jock whose wife had gone into premature labour. We legged it back to the crew who, to their great credit, took it all in very good spirit.

[Wensleydale]

A story that I had heard at Lossie back in the early 1980s- don't know if it is true.... However,

Duty crew sat in 8 Sqn ops late one night waiting for the night flying Shack to arrive back. A phone call came from the Navy - they had to get a wife who was in Aberdeen to the bedside of her husband who was somewhere on the south coast (forget where) and had been critically injured.

Having tried (unsuccessfully) to make contact with Sqn execs, the duty crew contacted the Shack and asked for the fuel state. The Shack captain was only too happy to help - the Shack landed at Aberdeen and took the wife to an airfield where she was collected and reached her husband before he died the next day.

The Navy was most grateful. A signal of thanks was sent to CinC and AOC in addition to info copies to Stn Cdr Lossiemouth and OC Sqn, commending the excellent inter-service co-operation.

The result was that the aircraft captain and the officer manning the Sqn Ops desk were summonned to Group and given a one way b*ll*cking because the flight to carry a civilian had not been authorised iaw GASOs.

So much for initiative.....:ugh:

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Definitely a case of "do it and take the b*ll*cking" !

[Tricorn]

Puzzled about the questions about dumping fuel over the Jocks. Last time I looked Edinburgh was a few miles from the coast, so returning the fuel to the North Sea (whence it may have come) would seem to be the easy answer, so I assume there was a good reason not to use whatever fuel dump system the Tristar has.


Is it still permissible to routinely dump fuel in these 'green' times? :ooh:

[Juan Tugoh]

Is it still permissible to routinely dump fuel in these 'green' times?

I don't think it was ever permissible to "routinely" dump fuel but in an emergency or when operationally required it is possible and permissable to dump fuel.

[Wensleydale]

Was it "Allied Force" when the last day's missions were all cancelled because of bad weather sausage side? Unfortunately someone forgot to cancel the tankers. There was a bit of fuel dumped that day as well.

[Top Bunk Tester]

Karma022202 wrote

James, the answer to your question is as low as safely possible.

Which, if you knew anything about modern aviation , is patently bolleuax.
You would fly the patient at 0 feet cabin pressure altitude. Depending on the aircraft and the max pressure differential permitted could be any reasonable flight level. Once brought a wife back from AKT into Northolt, following a major RTC with serious head injuries. This just meant that my workload was slightly increased keeping the cabin at 0 feet and we had to divert around the alps, as by going over the top would have raised the cabin above 0 feet.

[JW411]

Axe in the Head:

I can remember when I was flying Argosys with 105 Sqn in Aden, one of my mates did a low-level casevac from Masirah back to Aden.

The Pakistani imam had married a local girl to one of the Pakistani workers. The local sheik took great exception to this turn of events and laid about the holy man with a scimitar (sword not Vickers) splitting his skull in a couple of places.

The brief was to fly not above 500 feet which was easy, out to sea.

The patient made a full recovery in the QE hospital in Aden and announced his intention of returning to Masirah. Our political masters were unhappy about this idea and repatriated him back to Pakistan.

[fergineer]

Top Bunk that is ok till you get a pressurisation problem......Have done the long trip home via the sea route from AKR.

[jamesdevice]

so back to my question - what would it have been? 500 feet or so Falklands to Ascension? That sounds a heck of a challenge

[Dengue_Dude]

Generally the medics would ask you to keep a sea level cabin. That would allow a C130K to cruise up to about FL180 (if memory serves).

At 180 and LRC, you could probably make MPA-ASI with enough reserves for Island Holding (SOP there).

I operated a DC10 out of Dhaka en route Jeddah, on take off we lost a hydraulic system. The dump system didn't work, so we stooged around at 8,000 or so with the slats out, gear down and airbrakes cracked, engine anti-icing on to burn down to landing weight - still took 4 hours.

[fergineer]

DD what you doing up this late?

[fergineer]

James it would have been a tanker out of MPA and there would have been another tanker to meet it from ASI so it could have gone at whatever level it needed too. If low on fuel the tanker from ASI would have refuelled it.

[Wycombe]

Remember a trip on the Funbus AKT-BZZ where we cruised at FL240 all the way at request of the aeromeds due to baby in incubator on board. Took about an hour longer than normal IIRC, but spectacular views.

[Dengue_Dude]

DD what you doing up this late?

Not enough red wine old chap . . .

[brit bus driver]

Good to see the BBC using a nice, up-to-date image of the Tri*...

http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/55165000/jpg/_55165266__304015_tristar300-1.jpg

circa 1990 perhaps?

[Seldomfitforpurpose]

Probably the only snap anyone has of it actually in the air :E

[chopd95]

Early 70's, Luqa OM bar, MTO had put a barrel on to celebrate winning one of those frequent NEAF competions to economise on fuel usage (probably by re-routing some routine MT runs ). enter Nimrod captain ( Possibly C... M.....t ) asked what the occasion was about, when advised of the fuel saving measure he took a thoughtful draft of Hop Leaf and uttered words to the effect " Flipping heck" I dumped more than that in the Med an hour ago !!

[Dengue_Dude]

Good to see the BBC using a nice, up-to-date image of the Tri*...



circa 1990 perhaps?

Must confess that's what they looked at when I flew them. Much better when they binned the probe lights - the noisy bits. The probe was OK.

Reckon 1990/91 is a pretty accurate stab.

[brit bus driver]

Well, the probes were off, but the lights were on when I joined them in 91.

Now I hear the lights are off and nobody's home!!

:ok:

[Motleycallsign]

Poor Timmy and Tommy Tri* are now grey with age as well. 949 must have been using Gr£c!&n 2000 tho' as it came back in 3 different shades of grey.

[Exascot]

I was operating a VC10 on a training flight to the North Pole. We refueled up to the gunnels at Keflavik. On the climb out at max t/o weight the flaps stuck on retraction. For the uninitiated this is a very critical stage of flight at this weight. I instructed the flt eng to carry out an emergency fuel dump. Once the fuel was flowing I called for the check list. The last check is ATC permission. They said on no account were we to dump into the sea in our current position it was their valued fishing area. I didn't buy Icelandic cod for some years after that!

[Sook]

Are you sure 949 has gone grey? Last time it was spotted it was definitely white.

[TorqueOfTheDevil]

a training flight to the North Pole


Not much training benefit for the nav on this one, presumably? "Head north till you can't go any further then turn onto south";)

[GIATT]

Not much training benefit for the nav on this one, presumably? "Head north till you can't go any further then turn onto south"

I realise there is a difference between Actual, Grid, and Magnetic but I'm pretty certain if you flew as far as you could and then turned you'd be heading anywhere but south.

Of course if you flew in a circle the PAX might be kept busy adjusting their timepieces to local time...

[Exascot]

Not much training benefit for the nav on this one

We had so many Navs on board it was navigation by committee. Actually it was a flight we did every year in those days testing out new systems. I just flew uphill on the way there and downhill on the way back - easy ;)

[MSF]

949 still at Marshalls with no engines all dressed in white with a baby blue cheatline.

[TorqueOfTheDevil]

Actually it was a flight we did every year in those days


No doubt there were many such interesting training flights - in the same way that even the humble yellow Sea King has ended up all over Europe (Slovenia, anyone? Though they were meant to be in Austria, and the ex-Yugoslav AD set-up luckily wasn't too sharp!). There's even a tale of an RAF SK making its way to Iceland many moons ago, though - perhaps unsurprisingly - I never saw any evidence to prove it!