Parapunter
 

Unfortunately some members of the 2 winged master race assume that they have a right to rule the world. Fortunately they are in a minority.

Getting back to the original post: Easy have handled this whole incident appallingly. Do they care?

NO!

swap time
 

depends what else was going on, but I wonder whether Easyjet considered swapping the flight to another airframe? There might have been another flight that could have taken off with the extra fuel (going almnost empty someplace, or going further than Geneva) or a plane sitting idle to swap to and take the overfilled one to go burn circles for a few hours that evening, bus passengers to another airport, etc.

G

No matter what happened, oversight, omission, lack of monitoring, FO's mistake, incorrect ordering, miscommunication to the bowser operator, the responsibility lies with the Captain; no-one else's.

Why any one of those occured is another story but it's still his responsibility.

Fuel error leaves easyJet plane too heavy
 

Interesting article over at BBC News regarding an easyJet flight that took on too much fuel and then had to choose to disembark some passengers to equalise the W&B.

BBC News - Easyjet fuel error leaves Birmingham plane too heavy

If we are prepared to accept that taking fuel off/attempting to burn off fuel in some way was impractical (and I happily accept the explanations from the professionals on this thread that it was), then it seems Easyjet was left with no alternative but to take passengers/luggage off.

HOWEVER, why did they not explain to the pax remaining on board that they would be flying without their luggage? I wonder how many people would have chosen to get off and make alternative arrangements? Failing to tell customers that you are leaving their luggage behind in these circumstances is just plain dishonest. The least I would expect in this situation is to be informed of ALL the facts so that I could react appropriately to minimise the inconvenience that Easyjet (or those for while they are responsible) were causing me.

I would think that anybody with a modicum of common sense would realise that a seasonal flight going to GVA in the Xmas period is going to have primarily ski trip pax aboard. This means that, the majority of them are going to leave GVA and travel to high altitude cold snowy places, where they then intend to go to the very top of the mountain in midwinter conditions. It is therefore a reasonable expectation that the majority of those pax will be very highly reliant on the content of their baggage to be able to have any purpose to their trip. Arguably failure to deliver the baggage coincident with the pax is potentailly a safety issue, given the purposes of the trip. Many ski destinations are lucky to have a minimarket, never mind outlets where you can purchase any form of replacement wardrobe. To read that it took five days for some luggage to get to their owners beggars belief, given the number daily flights from UK to GVA, or the fact that most courier companies could do it overnight.

And don't be too quick to make the pay peanuts sort of comments. By the time a typical skier/boarder has paid for luggage and skis on top of the already enhanced fares from non-london airports to ski destinations with the likes of Easy, they ain't cheap - in fact the legacies (Swiss and BA) usually work out less.

I'm a skier, and if I was told the choice is you get to GVA but your baggage won't, or we offload you, believe me, the offload is the much better option.

Defuel
 

phone call to fuel farm tell them problem, refueller putting that much on a flight that normally takes 10 ton less should have known better and should have stopped fuelling when getting to a high fuel figure. Switching on APU and taking out GPU can upset fuel panel and remove preset figure so you can pump away all day, that said if no empty bowser fuel company can emty a full one or part full back into storage tanks, the rule is on bowsers and defuels : is the 10% rule and capacity of vehicle, with a defuel of 5000kg this is more than 10% capacity so it has to be an empty truck, this fuel then has to be sold back to the same airline, and yes you have to have fuel samples from every fuel tank sump drain to check for contamination. On small defuels if its less than 10% of contents you can check fuel and resell to anyone. It is a time consuming job but not impossible and it wouldn't have taken long to resell the fuel from that bowser back to EJ.

Quick way out.
 

Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking.

It seems that we can’t find 30 passengers who will give up their seats for a safe departure. Therefore, unfortunately we will have to try an overweight take off. We will endeavour to get off the ground before we get to the car park at the end of the runway. There is a 50/50 chance of doing so and we may not make it. If anyone wants to make a donation of £100 to a charity of your choice to get off now, please make yourself known to our cabin crew.

No problem 30 pax off in the blink of an eye and £3000 to comic relief.

No contest, The Buck Stops Here, but there are two threads running on this, here and Jet Blast, and I think it was someone on the other one that said that the pilot got his sums wrong.

It is this automatic assumption by the Great Unwashed that EVERY aviation incident must be caused by pilot error that gets my goat, although of course some are.

MAYBE the pilot did get his sums wrong, maybe not, maybe the bowser driver entered the wrong amount into his meter, many scenarios - does ANYONE know the true FACTS ?

PPRuNe does include RUMOUR in the title, seems that's all that people care about, never let the collection of truth before opening mouth interfere with a good story.

I bet the ONLY person who knows the truth is the Easyjet employee who made the decision to offload pax and baggage - and I also bet that we will never find out who that was. Yes, it might have been the Captain, but equally maybe not, which of course doesn't deny that he took the ultimate responsibility by going along with it, but then again, Captains can't be held responsible for every decision made by the Commercial division before they are presented with the loadsheet, but ..... does anyone know the facts ?

Another reason for overfuel
 

The crew/engineers may not have been on the aircraft when said aircraft was being fuelled.

In my airline in Oz, we calculate our fuel loads during our flight planning at the beginning of our shift. These figures are sent to our load control who forward them to the refuellers. Sometimes our aircraft are fuelled without anyone on board. On occasion (around once per year) our aircraft have been overfuelled.

(Disclaimer: I have no idea what Ezyjets procedures are for refuelling)

DIVOSH!

Surely the ops team at HQ have a fully worked out SOP for how to handle overfuelling, rather than making it up as they are going along.

I have decided it would take the threat of arrest by the police to get me ON an Easy jet flight!! Will stick to Emirates .:D

Do Easy Jet employ engineers at outstations or do they call on other type rated ones to help when there is a problem? BHX have some very good tractor drivers though!!

@ Yorkshire Tyke

So YT, are we to infer from your sneering message to us that no one should post on any subject until all direct participants have posted legalised affidavits of the real, true and complete facts ?

AS ( probably a member of the Great Unwashed as seen by YT )

Stop being such a snob! How on Earth is that any use in European short haul?

I think you'll find that the easyJet turnaround model means that the crew were almost certainly on the aircraft when it was being refuelled, with the possibility that one pilot was still doing the walk-around.

Parapunter, yes my post does refer to you. No one is saying that this was not a balls-up. It was. And if I had had to disembark / fly without bags, I too would have been annoyed. But the difference between us is I would have respected the decision, and understood the frustration, of the flight crew.

What riles me is that you do not seem to appreciate that: a) sometimes these things happen (obviously in your perfect logistics company, no mistake is ever made); b) on the very rare occasion that this happens, as here, there was no alternative way for the Captain to handle the situation.

Finally, re your ridiculous assertion about 'passengers getting in the way of flying planes', you should re-read the eyewitness report earlier in this read by a passenger on the flight who said he saw the captain clearly annoyed. Not really consistent with your argument, is it?

Crippen - looking at the recent reviews for Emirates, I wouldn't be so cocky!

^ Will let you know!:ok:

this is how you do it

Pilot stops plane for grieving man | The Sun |News

.'twould sure save a lot of time and effort - on everyones' part, but then where would be the fun and mystery ?