December 22, 2024

Why Pilots Dump Fuel Before Landing

12 minutes

Picture this: you're nestled cozily in your window seat on a jet airliner when suddenly, you notice weird white spray coming out the back of the wing. Is something wrong with the plane? Are you going to crash? No need to panic! At this moment, the pilots are performing a standard procedure called fuel dumping.

Btw, it's by no means cheap. For example, a mid-sized Boeing 737-300 uses about two and a half tons of fuel per hour of travel. The price of jet fuel is more than $600 per ton, so that means that while flying such a plane, you spend approximately $1,500 per flight hour. So why do they do that?

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TIMESTAMPS:

How much does jet fuel cost? 0:30

Why pilots literally throw away a fortune 💰 1:18

How exactly they do that 2:42

What about environmental pollution? 😖 4:10

Fuel for all kinds of emergency situations 4:47

Why fuel is kept in the wings ✈️ 7:06

#planes #aviation #brightside

SUMMARY:

Most planes must be lighter when they land than when they take off, like more than 200,000 pounds lighter!

If a plane doesn't use a certain amount of fuel before landing, it might hit the ground too hard, which can lead to some serious damage.

From time to time, emergencies occur, and planes are forced to land way earlier than planned.

Few people know that most fuel is stored in the wings of an aircraft. That's why, when a pilot flips a switch in the cockpit, a sophisticated system of pumps and valves comes into action, and special nozzles in the wings let out excess fuel.

On the other hand, not all planes have this complicated system. For example, narrow-bodied planes like the Boeing 757 or Airbus A320 can't dump fuel.

But if the plane's construction allows it, pilots prefer to eject fuel rather than to risk people's lives.

Most fuel evaporates while still in the air and never hits the ground.

It may seem terrible from an environmental pollution standpoint. But here’s one bitter truth: one way or another, when planes fly up there, all the fuel ends up in the atmosphere anyway.

By the way, every plane must carry more fuel than is necessary just to cover the distance from point A to point B.

On December 29, 2014, Virgin Atlantic Flight VS43, bound for Las Vegas, took off from Gatwick Airport. Shortly after, the pilots realized that the plane's right-wing landing gear had gotten stuck and hadn't retracted.

After circling for several hours, the pilots finally ejected enough kerosene over the territory of southern England to return to Gatwick.

One of the reasons for locating fuel tanks in the wings is to lighten the aircraft's fuselage, which reduces the pressure on the wing roots.

If all the fuel was stored in the nose or tail of the aircraft, the center of gravity would change along with the fuel consumption, and it would mess with the plane's stability.

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