The nose gear is down but twisted 90 degrees. Live coverage of the plane on major US cable news networks. Presntly dumping fuel.

Sky news reporting that the nosegear has been 'twisted through 90 degrees'! Truly bizarre. Watching a live feed now of it apparently making an approach into LAX after dumping fuel. Reportedly 145 POB. Good luck!

16B

MSNBC reports: From an NTSB agent, airbus does not have capabilities to dump fuel. Expected to land 5:25p LAX.

CNN: says they dumped fuel... Can they or can't they?

Cannot dump fuel

D.L.:ok:

A320's do not have fuel dump capability - misinformed Journo.

Why can't they dump fuel. Technical reason or political (environmental wacko laws in CA?)

Yes, the television reporters have corrected that the pilots are burning off fuel, and don't have the capability to dump it.

Fuel dumping is accomplished from a fuel manifold by opening a valve on the manifold, fuel is dumped overboard, this aircraft will fly fine on one engine so there is no need for this feature.

D.L.:ok:

What if they had no luxury of circling and burning off fuel. What if they were on fire and had to land in a hurry, right after take off. Can anyone comment. Are all A320s like this or are all Airbuses like this.

Fuel dump is only required equipment if you need to get down to max landing wt. in a hurry.

Flaps are still up, so he's not in a big hurry. (17:52 PDT)

If you had to land in a hurry, then it probably would not matter wether you had dumping capability or not. No time to dump, only land

The same NTSB agent mentioned some Boeing a/c also cannot dump fuel ie: MD-80

Some Boeing Aircraft; MD80:}

D.L.

Some Boeing Aircraft; MD80

Includes some 767-200 models, no dumping system installed.

If you are in a hurry, do the overweight landing check-list and land right away.

If you have time and need to be be light, either dump if your aircraft is so equiped (nearly all wide-bodies) or burned it (a lot of narrow bodies).

Here, with landing gear problem, trying to be light make sense.

Lots of newer aircraft these days are certified to land at close to MTOW in emergency, hence fuel dump feature not required.

As far as I know if an aircraft can structurally survive a landing at MTOW then a fuel dump feature is not required.

The B757-200/300 has no fuel dump feature.

A 300-600

MTOW 150.000 kg
MLW 138.000 kg

NO FUEL DUMP

Any aeroplane can land back at MTOW in an emergency! They do it very easily. If they can take off from a runway, they can land back on it at MTOW. Even a B747-400 on fire will quite happily land back at that weight! But a fuel jettison system is fitted, usually to longer range aircraft as the spread between MTOW and MLW is so large- some 75 tonnes or so, and it may be necessary to lose fuel to minimum levels resulting in some 12+ hours burning up fuel without a jettison system.