on March 23rd 2018 a 60 year old woman
on a flight from Shanghai to New York
began having trouble breathing when she
started slipping in and out of
consciousness the pilot knew there was
only one thing to do to save her dump
more than 65,000 pounds of fuel into the
sky the flight then made an emergency
landing in Anchorage Alaska where the
passenger recovered in a local hospital
but how did draining almost $20,000
worth of jet fuel save her life fuel
dumping simply explained as an aircraft
losing weight before it lands
Anthony is an associate professor at
embry-riddle Aeronautical University and
what he's talking about is officially
called a fuel jettison planes are
designed to land below certain weights a
heavier plane is more likely to hit the
ground hard and get damaged it's got
5,000 gallons of fuel which is about
three elephants weighing it down
so landing with a full tank is pretty
risky but most plates aren't landing
with a full tank they might not be
taking off with a full tank either
before takeoff the flight planner
calculates the amount of fuel needed to
complete the trip so that enough fuel
gets burned off over the course of the
flight and the planes weight comes down
and then it's safe to land a pilot will
choose to dump fuel only on very rare
occasions let's say you have a medical
emergency on board someone's dying you
don't really have time to fly around and
burn fuel so in that case that's when
you would dump fuel so that you can lose
weight quickly if the pilot has a little
more time or doesn't have the capacity
to dump fuel like in a lot of smaller
crafts they might dirty up the plane
this means purposefully creating drag
and flying around in circles in order to
burn off the excess fuel but if a
passenger is critical like the woman
from 2018 they might not have time for
that fuel jettisoning systems can dump
thousands of pounds a second most can
get a plane back down to its max landing
weight in 15 minutes or less and it's
usually as easy as flipping a switch in
the cockpit most systems are a series of
pumps and valves that divert the fuel to
the tips of the wings the fuel streams
behind the plane and what looks like
contrails and yes there is a fail-safe
in place to stop the pilot from
all the fuel at once but it's not just
the pilots judgement that decides when
and how fuel gets dumped the Federal
Aviation Administration has a handful of
regulations in place the plane has to be
at least 2,000 feet above the highest
obstacle along the route at least five
miles from any other aircraft and away
from populated areas and bodies of water
whenever possible but aside from this
page of FA policy that's about it when
it comes to regulations dumping fuel
into the atmosphere isn't free of
consequences but the Environmental
Protection Agency just isn't worried
about it it regards the practice as
exceedingly rare and leans into the fact
that airlines don't promote it because
it's a waste of money if we get to a
point where we're seeing more aircraft
with the capability to dump fuel and
we're seeing more aircraft dumping fuel
and maybe not from an emergency point of
view then maybe yes that would be
something that the EPA would need to
look into British Airways estimated in
1999 that only 0.01 percent of fuel used
by the aviation industry each year is
dumped if that number still holds up
today we're looking at almost 2 million
gallons dumped in 2018 by US airlines
alone dumped jet fuel is supposed to
evaporate before it hits the earth but
even boeing has said that even though
fuel is vaporized it is still suspended
in the atmosphere and the fuel will
eventually reach the ground the u.s.
agency for toxic substances and disease
registry listed mixed results in regards
to the biodegradability of jet fuel and
the same study went on to say it can be
transported by wind and become a
component of smog
so other than burning it off are there
any more alternatives to fuel dumping it
is possible to land an overweight plane
it happens every once in a while but
it's not recommended the flight safety
foundation lists almost 300 airplane
safety incidents from the beginning of
the 1900s to now
that include landing heavy as a
contributing cause whenever it happens
the plane stays grounded for a lengthy
inspection before it's allowed to fly
again but if you land heavy obviously
you could actually over stress the
aircraft which could cause immediate
damage or it could cause damage that
actually presents itself down the line
on a totally different flight no matter
if a flight crew decides to dump dirty
or land heavy each option has its pros
and cons but in an emergency situation
your job as the pilot is to get the
aircraft down to the ground as quickly
as possible and as safely as possible
and if that means landing heavy then
that's just the decision that's going to
have to be made in some situations you
really don't have a choice you you have
to get down ultimately it comes down to
keeping passengers safe