[madmaveric]

Looks like their trip to NY lasted 5 hours of circling.

papers
http://metro.co.uk/2014/12/17/plane-circling-over-english-channel-for-hours-after-maintenance-issue-4990979/

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/united-airlines-emergency-landing-live-4827405



Updated with another link

[Mike Cross]

Had a similar issue many years ago.

Departing Luqa in an Armstrong Whitworth Argosy (that tells you how long ago it was). Captain tried to pressurise but couldn't because of a leaky door. Couldn't land to fix it because we were overweight for landing so circled while Loadmaster and other crew members spent a lot of time fiddling with it, and eventually got it to seal. You've guessed it......... by this time we had insufficient fuel on board to continue to Istres but were still overweight for landing, so lots more holding until we'd burnt on enough to land, so we could take on more.

[madmaveric]

Had to laugh at this one

[Dave W]

[Keef]

Excellent!

[greggj]

Made my day. Even two runs I did Today didn't cheer me up this much

[anglianav8r]

A TV news reader described the situation as "fuel dumping" whilst the aircraft was clearly going around in circles. Dare I assume they were burning off fuel to get down to an appropriate weight for landing? If so, then it was the usual carp news reporting.

[adsdjo]

Madmaveric, that is the best thing I've seen for a long time! I salute you!

[matthew_w100]

Which has the long-term least cost to the environment - circling a couple of times hosing liquid fuel into the sea, or circling lots and lots of times pumping C02 and other combustion products into the atmosphere and hastening the next maintenance etc?

[madmaveric]

I confess that I didn't do it, someone else edited the image, but I couldn't help sharing it as I found it funny.

I think it was over at pistonheads but I seem to have lost the link now.

[Human Factor]

Which has the long-term least cost to the environment - circling a couple of times hosing liquid fuel into the sea, or circling lots and lots of times pumping C02 and other combustion products into the atmosphere and hastening the next maintenance etc?

Who knows. What I do know is that not all 767s have a fuel jettison facility, although the -400 has funnily enough. Equally, not having flown it (mighty 777 for me), there may have been a reason why it couldn't be used or they may have had a lot of fuel to dump.

[AlanB]

Couldn't they have gone sighsteeing around the UK at 12k rather than circling over the channel for 5 hrs?

[riverrock]

http://avherald.com/h?article=47ef4f43&opt=0

Comments suggest that they can only dump fuel from certain tanks - the rest they have to burn off. No idea how true that is.

[Sir Morley Steven]

That was actually me and Timothy laying down chemtrails to drift over the Isle of Wight. We need high concentration to keep the population there living in the 50s hence the multiple passes. Don't tell anyone.

[Human Factor]

That was actually me and Timothy laying down chemtrails to drift over the Isle of Wight. We need high concentration to keep the population there living in the 50s hence the multiple passes. Don't tell anyone.

You're not doing enough. I was there a few months ago and it was rapidly approaching 1976....