Lufthansa Frankfurt - Toronto diverted to Manchester

[The AvgasDinosaur]

Apparently on Thursday afternoon a Lufthansa B.747 en route Frankfurt to Toronto was diverted to Manchester to deposit a drunken passenger and his luggage.
Hope they get the full bill.
Would a fuel dump be required this early in a long haul flight ?

[gearlever]

Oh my God. A diversion.....

[The AvgasDinosaur]

I asked a serious question in my post as well

[B2N2]

Likely no as I don't expect it would have a full fuel load for that 'short' a trip.

[The AvgasDinosaur]

Many thanks for your prompt reply.

[Airbubba]

Looks to me like they did a little maneuvering at altitude to burn down to landing weight and/or get a welcoming party ready at Manchester:

https://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/lh470/#cf90756

https://flightaware.com/live/flight/DLH470/history/20170406/1210Z/EDDF/EGCC

[Gertrude the Wombat]

a drunken passenger
How come?


(1) Drunk on boarding the plane (gate staff failure)
(2) Got drunk on board from alcohol supplied by cabin crew (cabin crew failure)
(3) Got drunk on board from alcohol carried into the airport (security staff failure)


or


(4) Got drunk on board from alcohol purchased duty free (about the only way it couldn't have been partially someone else's fault)

[Herod]

OK Gertrude. Since you want to blame everyone except the drunk himself:

1, Drunk on boarding. Would have been spotted by cabin crew

2. Alcohol supplied by cabin crew. How much can you drink in that short time?

3. Alcohol carried through security. No way.

4. Alcohol purchased duty free. Yep, and probably poured into a soft-drink bottle to get past the cabin crew. Thinks he's (she's) clever. Throw the book at them.

[Doors to Automatic]

David - to give you a slightly more detailed answer - I do not know whether this was a 747-400 or -800 but let's assume it was the former. EDIT - it was the 747-400

The aircraft empty weight is around 187 tonnes.
Maximum landing weight is c297 tonnes (MTOW is over 400t) so there are 110 tonnes available for fuel and payload.

Typical payload for a reasonably full flight with some cargo will be in the region of 40 tonnes so that leaves 70 tonnes for fuel.

Including reserves and diversion fuel this would provide around 7 hours of flight time so on a day where no significant delays are forecast (e.g due to weather) this would mean that a diversion could be carried out somewhere between 5 and 6 hours from the destination without the need to burn off or dump fuel.

EDIT: having seen the flight plot this looks consistent with the circuits the aircraft flew which appear to take around 30 minutes.

[slam_dunk]

If it was a 747-400 , max Landing weight allowed is 285.800 KG, otherwise it's an overweight landing

[DaveReidUK]

Looks to me like they did a little maneuvering at altitude to burn down to landing weight and/or get a welcoming party ready at Manchester

Half an hour at FL340 isn't going to make much difference to the landing weight, unless they were dumping as well as burning ...

[Big Eric]

The aircraft involved was D-ABVU, a 747-430.

[Doors to Automatic]

Half an hour at FL340 isn't going to make much difference to the landing weight, unless they were dumping as well as burning ...

About 5 tonnes?

[wiggy]

If it was a 747-400 , max Landing weight allowed is 285.800 KG, otherwise it's an overweight landing

Yep, that was certainly the number for ours.....As I recall it ballpark figures figures were if you were up to max ZFW you'd generally need to dump down to around 40 tonnes in tanks before you were at Max Ldg Wt ( structural).

Tanks fuel for the flight in question at departure may have been in the vicinity of 70, plus/minus tonnes, they may well have burnt 10 tonnes climbing out and during the short cruise, so maybe 60 tonnes left in tanks when it went pear shaped with the drunk......so at the risk of speculating ( but isn't that what we are here for) I'd have thought they would have needed to dump around 20 tonnes, maybe less if the ZFW was below max.

TBH can't remember the 744 dump rate...