fuel dumping
 

Can any of you people settle an argument. I live about 20 miles away from Cardiff Wales airport where a 747 had to make an emergency landing with a suspected fireyesterday. About 90 minutes before this happened I was walking on one of the hill tops with my son and i said to him, "I'm sure i can smell aviation fuel". Cardiff say they know nothing of this. Is that something that the pilot would have concidered? He was running a very light 747 with only two passengers on board and 17 crerw, i would image he would have had loads of fuel left????

Regards Roger Luke

I can't imagine for one minute that the pilot would have found it necessary to dump fuel on this occasion.

He would in all likelihood have had less fuel than normal at this stage in the flight (a lighter aircraft requires less fuel for a given flight and he only had 2 passengers. The aircraft would probably have left NY with substantially less fuel than "normal")

The reason to dump fuel would be to bring the weight of the aircraft down to maximum landing weight. Again as he had only 2 passengers, the aircraft would have been extremely light so there would have been no requirement to reduce weight.

You'll always be able to smell jet fuel within quite a few miles of any major airport, if the wind is in the right direction.

No way would that 747 have needed to dump fuel. Even if it had been fully laden from JFK, I reckon it might have been under Max Landing Weight after 6-7 hours flight to Cardiff anyway.

fuel dumping
 

Thanks for the quick replies. Cardiff is not a major aiport and i have never noticed that smell before. I thought he may have dumped the fuel to minimise a major fire when he landed. the reason he landed was that there was a smell of burning in the cockpit ( media talk) which turned out to be nothing. Having said that the 747 is still in Cardiff for some reason.

Thanks Roger Luke

An on-board fire is no small matter. Not knowing the full details of this particular flight, nor the nature of the fire, it'd be difficult to make any sort of conclusion on it. But light or heavy, if i had a serious fire on board I'd likely not be wasting precious time in dumping fuel unless the only choice is landing on a 6000' slippery strip....

If any fuel were to be dumped with aircraft coming into Cardiff it would be vectored over the Bristol Channel. I wasn't working yesterday so cannot say for definite that it didn't dump fuel en route but I have no reason after a long flight to think that it may have done so either.

look at the other post about fuel dumping.

the COA dumped fuel over birmingham on boxing day and yesterday an AFR went back to Paris whilst dumping fuel over Reading area.

both were done at high levels. could it have drifted as far as Cardiff?

In a word, no. Certainly not in any meaningful concentration.

It is very unlikely that the aircraft was flying around for 90 minutes with the possibility of a fire on board. If they had to dump fuel to get into Cardiff, why not just carry on to LHR? It is less than 90 minutes flying time from Cardiff.

hey at least it's a good way of killing the weeds in the garden (and every other plant i suppose but hey it works) lol:}

It all came out of the ground anyway.

Recycling!! but an expensive and inefficient way to do it.