SR111: Vent Or Dump?
 

Anyone know the answer?
"We are declaring an emergency at time zero one two four. . . . We are starting vent now. We have to land immediately."
The term vent has investigators puzzled.
Did the pilot mean he was dumping fuel through the vents in the wings designed for that purpose?
Or that the smoke had got so bad the crew had actually opened the side windows in the cockpit?

If the investigation wasn't able to determine the answer, there is little point in asking the question on here.

The only people who would have been able to tell you are dead.

Get hold of a QRH. That might shed some light onto the matter.

Or the OP could simply read the accident report, which contains 5 separate references to that radio transmission and clearly states that they were starting to dump fuel.

The only puzzle is why he thought the investigators were puzzled.

Oh, come now, Dave, a good 80% of the questions asked on this forum really have no business being asked, it's not like this is the first one.

Even though they advised ATC of their intention to dump fuel, its my understanding that they hadn't begun the process because the smoke (and eventual fire) on the flight deck became a bigger priority. Because of that, venting was most probably a result of following the smoke evacuation checklist. Access to the CVR transcript would confirm that. Moreover, I have never heard fuel dump described as a "vent".

Me neither.

This probably belongs in Snopes as an urban myth - the OP's post isn't original, by the way, but is lifted from a 1998 newspaper article about the accident by a French-Canadian journalist (Paul Koring) on the Toronto Globe and Mail: Could the pilot have landed the plane?

In fact the TSB report, which of course includes data from CVR and ATC recordings, doesn't contain the word "vent" at all in the context of fuel.

Maybe - but the report does say

"Coincident with their declaration of an emergency condition, the flight crew indicated that they were starting to dump fuel and there are indications that they did so."

On a note related to smoke evac, I never did like where McD positioned the outflow valve on the DC-10, and subsequently the MD-11. It is behind the front office, but...:rolleyes:

Being an overwater guy for most of my career (including freighters with "unusual items" in the back), I especially never relished the thought of inflight smoke/fire...but who does?