Delta emergency @ LAX, dumps fuel on school playground.
 

LA Times report:
I expect the investigation will tell us whether the pilot really had to do that. It's not a common occurrence, thankfully.

I would imagine that an investigation into whether a pilot really had to dump fuel on a school won't take long ...

How does one aim for a school, and not hit an orphanage by mistake?

The schools are all marked as Waypoints - makes it much easier to hit them accurately.

We don't know the nature of the emergency. But the plaintiff attorneys for the kids doused in Jet A will say the pilots could have dumped fuel over the great blue Pacific, Or just landed overweight and damaged the aircraft instead raining it down upon the poor children of East LA. No serious injuries or fatalities, so Delta will settle quietly and quickly to get ahead of it.

According to FlightAware, DL89 descended below 6000' MSL before turning south on base leg of return to LAX. ADS-B reported altitude at commencement of westbound leg (final approach) was ~4800' MSL. Looks like about 2400' MSL when passing approximate position of school. Whoops! OF COURSE, one would need to know the exact nature of the emergency to determine if this was necessary or not.

Yes, they will, and Delta will need a really convincing answer explaining why they could not. I'm sure everyone here has a clear mental picture of the location of LAX and its environs.

No, the attorneys won't say anything like that, and you probably know it.

Yes, as is appropriate.

That's hardly, the binary choice, here. Some people really need to get a grip.

Must have been an very urgent need for it...........otherwise it’s a bit odd to dump there!!

It won’t kill anyone landing overweight....

"Or just landed overweight and damaged the aircraft...".

And then burn up the brakes, blow several tires, run off the end of the runway and kill/injure multiple passengers and crew.

A plausible scenario is setting fuel jettison to MLW with the intention of reducing landing weight as much as possible, but willing to accept an overweight landing. Then, forgetting to terminate the jettison as the aircraft descended because of a very busy cockpit.

I did all the adverse-chemical things blokes do when I was younger. Sucking petrol to get a siphon, wiping my hands with thinners. Just couldn't see it would hurt. I'm paying a very heavy price now by being allergic to a broad spectrum of chemicals. May not be connected but I would not want the science tested on children. It is vital they never, not once, breath in a significant mist of aviation fuel.

I suppose there's a reason they descended when they did. I recall on my last ever sim ride refusing a decent unnecessarily early. Altitude is money in the bank, especially on one engine.

Its a 777-200ER with RR Trent engines and should have no problem with an overweight landing except for needing an inspection following the landing - unless the problem was more than an engine. cthruit's response is the most logical I've read - forgot to quit dumping when they came back for a landing after having dumped fuel in the assigned area. They did manage to dump the fuel on several schools, possibly because at that time of day students were out playing while workers were - well, working, or out commuting. OMG the potential for disaster sucking jet fuel into the engine compartment and onto a hot engine. But then again knowing jet fuel is not all that volatile, the reason it was still in droplets as it dumped on the people below, such a happening extremely remote.

Listening to the tapes at LiveATC.net...

DL89 LAX-PVG reported compressor stalls on the right engine climbing to 8000 feet high speed approved and said they needed to return to the airport. Was asked if they needed to hold or dump fuel, they said no, they had the engine back under control, it was 'not critical'.

Said they would slow to 280 knots, request 25R for length. SOB's 181, fuel 12+00. When asked if they wanted equipment standing by they said no, uh, I mean yes, we'll plan to pull off the runway. Fuel later given as 209.8 (if you give it as time they always seem to want it in pounds and vice versa is my experience ;)), approach speed 157 knots.

Vectors ILS 25R, they taxi clear of the runway, call ARFF on 127.85, everything looks good, they taxi to the gate. Brake temps must have looked OK I guess. No mention of a fuel dump or engine failure on final that I hear but as always, the LiveATC.net online scanners miss some transmissions with traffic on other channels.

Seems likely explanation.

How much additional fuel would they have been able to dump if they deliberately continued dumping after going below the min allowed dump height?
I am guessing that it would not be enough to make all that much difference.

At least they (apparently) terminated the jettison before landing, that could have been interesting.

The hazard of an overweight landing is a lot less than a high speed rejected takeoff and as others have pointed out would require an inspection with worst case possibility of a some repairs.

There's a firsthand account and a pic over at The War Zone over on TheDrive[dot]com.

[Shamelessly plagiarized from Noelcarry's post there.]
It's in the 'Mysterious Navy Cube story.'
I'm still too new to post links.

Video of alleged fuel dumping below. If that is the aircraft in question, pretty low over a densely popluated area (all of LA fits that bill). Given the population density, one might estimate a million law suits or more as other jump on the legal train.

https://nypost.com/2020/01/14/delta-...anding-at-lax/


Airb, you might be right. It is California after all.

From avherald:
"A Delta Airlines Boeing 777-200, registration N860DA performing flight DL-89 from Los Angeles,CA (USA) to Shanghai Pudong (China) with 181 people on board, was climbing out of Los Angeles' runway 24L when the crew stopped the climb at 8000 feet reporting right hand engine (Trent 892) compressor stalls, they needed to return to LAX."
181 pax?

The L.A. Times story:

https://www.latimes.com/california/s...-officials-say

Very bad P.R.

So, would the locals where you live be unconcerned if their elementary-age kids were doused with Jet A? Come on, folks, let's not get carried away with our prejudices.

How close to MTOM do you think this triple was? Assuming full pax and 12 hr flight time. I am not familiar with that a/c, only 767/74.

FAA media statement on the fuel dump.

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....f49558d0ca.jpg

Partial ATC recording.

Try and repeat this more than once. You don't drop fuel on a school you fool

C'Mon we all know it wasnt fuel. It was chemtrails. Get them whilst they are young. :E

Just needed a bucket of MJU-10s and it could have been urban renewal.

My money is that someone forget to end the jettison as they went back over land again :P

Pretty close to what I got from scrubbing the recordings. I heard 'twelve plus zero zero' for the first fuel report, VAS transcribed it as 212.0.

VASAviation commented:

The 124.9 approach freq that VAS couldn't find is listed on LiveATC as KLAX Final App (North/South). The ARFF freq was a tower helo freq of 127.85. No mention of fuel dump or an engine failure that I heard.

Good job as usual VASAviation! :ok:

USA a country of litigation, now all California attorneys will look for a class actions, people will forget that landing overweight might have caused some serious injuries, however where in the rest of the world attorneys are advertising on television to claim compensation from weed killers to road accidents?

Continuing to dump fuel at 2,800’ (previous posters altitude/ground track comparison) vs stopping at 5000’/6000’ is only about 20,000 lbs weight difference. They wouldn’t have been within 20,000 lbs of their limiting landing weight.

Advised doesn't need to dump fuel and engine under control and not critical. Yet dumped fuel and rushed the approach. That's not how we do it in the sim.

Could it be something other than a fuel dump but a fuel control issue, most aircraft engine valves are fuel pressure controlled so compressor stalls, vsv issue fuel leak, HMU/fcu problem ?

Would that not cause fuel to spray from the affected engine, rather than both dump valves at the wing tips?

I would think that in California, the environmental impact of unburnt aerosol fossil fuel would be considered less than that of burnt fossil fuel?

Maybe thats not how you do it in the sim, on the usual... Maybe they hit a flock of birds, screwed up eng 2, maybe the crew saw birds going to eng 1 and it was bit acting up, would be enough for our crews to hit the emergency dump, esp when heavy. Happened to me on a MD11, hitting the emergency dump at low altitude saved us from making a hole in the ground(BOG).

Does anyone in this thread actually fly a long haul commercial jet? I often wonder at some of the comments?
people seem to make statements rather than ask questions for the experienced aviators to answer eg “ some kids doused in fuel is better than a smoking hole”!

1 overweight landings even up to max takeoff weight are approved in an emergency. Example fire on board.
all that’s required is an inspection.
2 dumping fuel gets you down to max landing weight , or near it, and is recommended if possible.
3 dumping should be conducted at higher altitudes >6ooo ft and over non built up areas and in a straight flight path
4 weight is not critical to safety generally unless on a short limiting runway. On a large jet 2 tones of weight = approx 1 knot.
In short the decision to land overweight depends on the severity of the emergency and the runway length/conditions.
I can think of no excuse at all for dumping so low as shown in the video.
As for the hypothesis that “they forgot”- well OMG. Has pilot training/skills set really sunk that low? I know that in the next 25 years 500,000 pilots are required mainly in developing world. Now there’s a challenge.
R Guy

Good day Wings4
can you elaborate on the rationale that “hitting the dumps saved a smoking hole”.its an unusual scenario?
cheers
Apologies- I’m an older retired guy and maybe becoming a bit forgetful​​​​​​!

From another old retired guy - I have landed at near max weight after what we thought was a fire on board. The landing was a non-event, only at an appropriately faster speed and with no damage at all. I agree with retired guy, there is a lot of foolishness on this thread.

Forgetting is pretty easy in a high workload environment. Its pretty easy to reach task saturation when you're dealing with an engine failure over a populated area in very busy airspace at a congested airport.

This can happen to anyone at any time, just takes a single task more than you can deal with and this has happened in the past to very experienced air crew, eastern 401 is an example of this, unfortunately there the pilots forgot to aviate first.