Originally Posted by dxbX5

Thanks godeacs06 for getting that in there - I was just about to clear that one up myself. It's only the larger airliners that have a fuel dump capability and that would be used when a quick approach and landing was required - eg. an uncontrollable fire. Normal procedure would be to burn fuel in a low hold to get down to your maximum landing weight.

Had the airbus been on fire they would not have hesitated to make an overweight landing as the problems associated with that are greatly outweighed by a fire burning through the main spar and a wing falling off!!!

Small airliners under the size of the airbus A320 and the boeing 737 can never dump fuel. They will simply look at the problem and decide whether they want to hold and reduce their weight or get on the ground as soon as possible - at any weight.