I was listening to JFK center on my scanner this afternoon, and I heard an Air India 747 talking to one of the center's controllers and he said that he needed an additional 45 mins for his fuel dump.Outside of an emergency, why would an aircraft dump fuel?[br][br][div align=center][br][link:members.cox.net/fstimes/wetimage.html]Weather Image of the Day!

To bring the aircraft gross weight down to the certificated max. landing weight. It does not always have to be an emergency. If the crew decided on a precautionary landing due to some technical problem (like some kind of overheat before it turns into a fire etc.)in order to prevent getting into an emergency, they would have to dump fuel.Or due to some other event on board, like unruly passengers etc.Hope this helps.P.S.After just reading blowholes comment, I cannot resist to answer.If one looks at the entire transportation issue from an environmental standpoint, all combustion engines should be banned. Since the oil companies have bought up most patents for alternate engines the only solution would be to use sailships and horse carriages. Sadly our tchnology is not (yet) advanced enough to come up with propulsion systems that do not use gas or fossil fuels for everyday use.I guess the powers to be have made up their minds to prefer acid rain over horse droppings.

Nice! Acid Rain maker!Ken

Thanks...I heard "him" land a while ago and the tower said that emergency trucks would meet the plane, but the pilot said that he didn't think that it would be needed...but they did just as a precaution. So there was something up, just don't know what it was.

there certainly must have been something wrong because when you're still above your max. landing weight,I don't think they will allow the crew to dump some tons of fuel into the sea.flying a holding would be more appropriate then (except in an emergency of cours).and if the Air India is still above his max. landing weight after such a long flight (I presume he came from india),then he probably got alot of directs

Fuel is dumped all the time, really. On the old F-4's it seeped/blew out/leaked on every fast take-off. If you loaded for "normal" and had tail winds all the way, you might want to dump also: no extra points in seeing how much you can land with, haha. You would think it would make a big "noise" for enviornmental things, but I've never seen it mentioned.

I was on a flight from Newark to Amsterdam on June 5th, and a guy got really sick two seats behind me. The stewardess came over the intercom and asked if there was a Dr. onboard. There was, and he came back to see about this old guy. He relayed back that the guy needed immediate medical attention. As we had just taken off but were closer to Boston than the New York area, the pilot opted to take the DC-10 into Boston rather than turn back. I noticed that the pilot dumped a heck of a lot of fuel out over land for about 15 to 20 minutes prior to landing in Boston. He was obviously getting the weight of the airplane down. Being that I was near the window just behind the wing (the best place for flightsimmers), I watched the fuel pour out like a spray from a nozzle between the trailing edge flaps and the low speed aileron. I also took pictures of the spray and just after landing in Boston with the ambulance right there. I need to scan them to post them if anybody is interested. It was very unfortunate for the guy but fortunate for me because it was a bonus take off and landing. We had to stay on the ground for quite a long time after landing at Boston because of a broken pin in the landing gear that had to be replaced. I have wondered in the pin was broken because maybe we were still too heavy upon landing in Boston.

Hy!Nice story. That takes me to another question: Who pays for this emergency landing? The Airline? The unlucky guy? Any other?Thanks!Danny(near EDFU)

I heard the same thing happen to a American Airlines Flight a couple of days ago at JFK. This guy had a landing gear failure indicator lamp come on right after take off. He asked if it was possible to get an area blocked off to burn fuel for an hour. ATC gave him a holding pattern with 10 mile legs out over the water at 4000 feet. He requested that altitude so he could burn fuel faster. After about 1.5 hrs he finally landed. Same thing, they had the emergency vehicles out, but he made it CLEAR that he was not declaring an emergency. Im sure the pilots were busy with maintenance etc, but can you imagine the poor passengers flying in cirles for over an hour? -------------Michael

A few months ago ther was an 747 enroute from Curacao to Schiphol and then there was this guys who had drug in his tummy (don't know the right word ;) ).And there fore the 747 had to make an emergency landing, I thought it was KATL or KMIA......And that costed the airline about $25.000, because they had to pay for the landing and of course for the fuel. Which had been dumped over the Atlantic.They didn't tell who had to pay the bill.....but they have said how much it costed.Regards, :-waveEvert

It was a Northwest flight from Newark to Amsterdam on June 5th. I think the Airline will have to eat it. Rob

How much does it cost to land?

Landing costs depend on the airport. You have to 'rent' parking at airports (when talking about the heavies). And it is never cheap.

I have often wondered how much landing fees were at airports such as ATL, ORD, LAX, and JFK were, or at least those sorts of airports.

Well, I found this:March Inland Port shares facilities with the Air Force Reserve, which means cost effectiveness. Landing fees are $0.60 per 1000# compared to LAX