Not that I'd take what was said on FoxNews to the bank, but what was the purpose of keeping them up in the air for over 3 hours if not to burn off excess fuel?

__________________

Xoutpost.com - where you come for the information but stay for the friendships

Thank you for a job well done~!!!

From what I've heard from all pilots tonight, it seems like this plane behave extraordinarily well during landing given the situation. All the pilots on TV were expecting the steel beam holding the tires of the landing gear to collapse and it held.
For that we should give an A+ to Airbus as well as the pilot. Don't forget it's FRENCH AND GERMAN engineering and we know about GERMAN engineering, don't we?

Wow this is a miracle! It's like that Air France flight that crashed here in Toronto. Went up in flames, and everyone got out.

Today's events shows a perfect combination of a gifted flight crew, and a fool-proof aircraft. I hoenstly never knew the landing gear rod was that strong!

__________________
2008 ML320 CDI | Iridium Silver | Black ARTICO Leather | Premium Package (H/K Logic7, Parktronic, Rear Heated Seats, Rear Power Hatch, DVD Nav, 10-way Front Seats w/ Memory) | Backup Camera | Aluminum Running Boards | 4500K MTEC Low-beam HID | 30% Metallic Tint | Boomerang2 Recovery System | Weathertech Front Floorliners | Bridgestone Blizzak DM-V1 Winter Tires

I am not sure why they did not release fuel over the ocean but as an ex private pilote (have not pilotted a plane since I moved to the USA) and to have been lucky enough to do my end of engineering school training period at Airbus industry in Toulouse France (actually at the exact same time when the A320 was getting its certification- 1987), I can assure you that this plane like any other airliner can dump fuel in mid air.

The Airbus A320 DOES NOT HAVE FUEL DUMPING CAPABILITY

The reason they were in a rotational pattern around LAX was to accelerate fuel burn to meet landing stress requirements. If you noticed, they were flying with full flaps and gear down[not necessarily by choice] to increase drag and therfore make the engines work harder and burn more fuel.

Imagine what dumping a gallon of gasoline on your yard does to the grass, now imagine dumping thousands of gallons of high octane jet fuel into the environment. That is the thinking behind the lack of dumping capability on some Airbus aircraft.

godeacs06, thanks for the precision. I understand from your response that you are a pilot and probably more experienced than I am. Therefore I will take your word for it although I am extremely surprised that an airliner does not have this capability.

That pilot would be on my xmas card list for life. At 9 my first flight was on a private plane with my friends dad to view a movie plane crash in the high sierras that killed 36. At 11 going to Vegas by myself, don't ask, a similar incident to today happened. Flying sucks.

__________________
Rockin' is my business and business is good!
2005 4.4 X5 Black/Black, the goods

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.

__________________