Alliance Plane Now Circling Rottnest after Taking Off
 

Took off, now looks to be dumping fuel over Rottnest Island - any infor?

Quokkas were stirring up trouble, douse them down.

What makes you think it is dumping fuel?

"It's an aeroplane laddie, planes shave wood".

You media much?

The Plain boring pilot,circled the Plain Plane, over ye olde Playne, while observing the Plane of horizon. Down on the Plain, the Planer, planed the wood with plane to make it plainer.

Because it took off at 5:30am, went straight into a circling pattern for an hour and a half, then landed, and was followed to parking stand by fire trucks.

Do some research about fuel dumping capabilities on narrow body aircraft. Hot tip for you.

Don't be hard on him/her, it did dump fuel - just via the engines........

Yep. And understand the concepts of MTOW and MLW.

The requirement for fuel jettison capability has nothing to do with the concepts MTOW and MLW, and everything to do with climb performance at MTOW less a bit for fuel burn specified in FAR25.1001.

Thanks for taking me out of context to show your familiarity with certification and design requirements.
The point remains the OP should familiarise themselves with why medium sized aircraft circle after departure before a non life threatening return. MTOW and MLW will be enough for aviation journalism 201.

Easy to identify the experts here.

None of the aeroplanes that Alliance have can dump fuel. Only solution is to stay low and hold to get below the MLW if heavy.

If it’s on fire or another serious issue, get the thing on the ground ASAP.

Would an engine failure be considered “serious”?

In a transport category aircraft of two or more engines it's considered abnormal, not an emergency, unless there was complicating factors. That means you can take your time to do things right, but not dither either. Landing overweight and possibly damaging the aircraft is not necessary, so you can burn some fuel and get closer to a suitable landing weight. The company should have procedures in place so that crew know what is expected of them following an engine failure above MLW, that is whether they should reduce weight for a type, or landing above MLW is approved in that circumstance.

The A320 can depart at 77t, some operators have 64.5 lw some have 66. In the Airbus it's a land ASAP amber, which is not flying around on 1 engine for 4 or more hours. It's a long time since I flew the vintage aircraft (737NG) but I think the basic theory was the same, get the problem sorted and land. Transport category aircraft are designed to land at MTOW, and no damage will be done unless it's a hard landing. That said you wouldn't land overweight for eg a single hydraulic failure or pressurisation issue
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Most aircraft can land at MTOW, it took off at MTOW and the gear didn't collapse so one would assume a soft landing at MTOW would be fine as well, there is also increased compression on the mains as the tail force rotates the aircraft to climb attitude. As for whether no damage is done, depends on what you call damage, might simply add 100 landings to the gear cycles, which damages the bank balance in the long run in addition to an overweight landing inspection. Abonormals that exceed limits generally are allowed for by adding cycles/hours to the part as if it had worn more in some cases.

The point being the company should advise what they want crew to do unless it's plainly obvious. In most aircraft I've flown the checklists direct you to land at the nearest suitable airport. Only emergencies like fire dictate a landing ASAP.

The company can certainly provide information to the crew which may help with their decision making. They cannot advise the crew what to do!

FAR 25 maximum design descent rate for landing at MLW is 10ft/sec, at MTOW it is 6ft/sec.

Which equates to 300fpm in pilot terms. Hopefully the Captains on his A game on the day. And you hope its not a dark and stormy night with crosswind and windshear. I've never had to do an overweight landing, but I've definitely seen Captains try to plow potatoes into the runway, even on good days.