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To: Paleo Conservative
I don't think it takes a couple of hours to dump fuel. There was a situation about twenty years ago when an Eastern Airlines mechanic in Miami forgot to reinstall oil seals in all three engines in a Lockheed L-1011. The oil was quickly burned up in all three engines and the pilot made a rapid emergency landing back in Miami. As I recall, the plane was only in the air for about 20 minutes and dumped fuel on the way home while over the Atlantic. I don't know if they dumped all the fuel, but they landed safely back in Miami.

I think this plane should have dumped fuel in the Atlantic and landed somewhere on the east coast for repairs. Considering that they didn't know for sure that the problem was isolated in one engine, it was reckless to continue on to Great Britain.

75 posted on 03/07/2005 6:30:47 PM PST by carl in alaska (The mission for today is golf. The mission code word is "Julius Boros".....)
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To: carl in alaska
I think this plane should have dumped fuel in the Atlantic and landed somewhere on the east coast for repairs.

Considering it took off from LAX it started out over the Pacific. In order to dump fuel over the Atlantice, it would have to cross the US first.

The Miami incident was an emergency landing. I not sure if they got down to the recommended maximum landing weight or not. They didn't have much choice, because the engines weren't going to last very long.

Considering the flight path was going to be over land for the first few hours anyway, why dump fuel when it could be burned off enroute to an alternate destination where the passengers could be switched to another plane? The other three engines seemed to be working fine. It would seem to me that flying over the continental US with three engines working would not be very risky considering the number of airports available for diversion if necessary.

108 posted on 03/07/2005 7:48:40 PM PST by Paleo Conservative (Hey! Hey! Ho! Ho! Andrew Heyward's got to go!)
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