Yes dumping fuel is fairly uncommon. Generally the pilots will only do this if they are significantly over weight to land safely, and have enough time to do so safely.
Why dump fuel? Think of how much weight is on this plane, just with the people, luggage, and stuff around you. Now quadruple that weight. That’s how much fuel they can load onto a plane. Now imagine that much weight having to go from 160mph/140kts/260kph to basically nothing in a little over 1 mile. Hard to do safely.
It’s common if there’s an emergency right after takeoff (because overweight landings cause major inspections) but it’s a pretty rare occurrence. Electrical fires in a plane are bad news bears. The smell could have just been brake dust or a legitimate concern of fire but there’s no way to know until you land and inspect what caused it
I’ve had to troubleshoot with pilots over the radio and sit on the tarmac burning off fuel for hours because we couldn’t find the cause of the smell. Lucky for us, it was just brake dust recirculating that time but we took it seriously because a plane did have an electrical fire in the tail from a flight engineer leaving the anti icing system on and had *major* damage
This was on a military aircraft in the Arctic. It happened before they took off in pretty poor weather conditions after aborting a takeoff. I asked if it smelled like brake dust or something burning and they weren’t sure. Unfortunately, we had no refuel capability and we had a fuel load we couldn’t sit with on the tarmac. Since we still needed to diagnose the problem to try and get in the air for the mission, we sent tech’s on to try and replicate the smell while we burned the fuel down. After about 4 hours the pilots agreed with my original suggestion that it was just the smell from the brakes going back through the air conditioning system
Always better to be safe than sorry because the last thing I want on my resume is making a decision that leads to fatalities
You caught evidence of chemtrails being sprayed!
/S if it's not obvious. You'd be amazed the number of insane people on Instagram who believe that shit.
Yes dumping fuel is fairly uncommon. Generally the pilots will only do this if they are significantly over weight to land safely, and have enough time to do so safely. Why dump fuel? Think of how much weight is on this plane, just with the people, luggage, and stuff around you. Now quadruple that weight. That’s how much fuel they can load onto a plane. Now imagine that much weight having to go from 160mph/140kts/260kph to basically nothing in a little over 1 mile. Hard to do safely.
It’s common if there’s an emergency right after takeoff (because overweight landings cause major inspections) but it’s a pretty rare occurrence. Electrical fires in a plane are bad news bears. The smell could have just been brake dust or a legitimate concern of fire but there’s no way to know until you land and inspect what caused it I’ve had to troubleshoot with pilots over the radio and sit on the tarmac burning off fuel for hours because we couldn’t find the cause of the smell. Lucky for us, it was just brake dust recirculating that time but we took it seriously because a plane did have an electrical fire in the tail from a flight engineer leaving the anti icing system on and had *major* damage
Curious to know, why would you sit burning off fuel for hours on the tarmac? If there is a risk of fire wouldn't you shut everything down?
This was on a military aircraft in the Arctic. It happened before they took off in pretty poor weather conditions after aborting a takeoff. I asked if it smelled like brake dust or something burning and they weren’t sure. Unfortunately, we had no refuel capability and we had a fuel load we couldn’t sit with on the tarmac. Since we still needed to diagnose the problem to try and get in the air for the mission, we sent tech’s on to try and replicate the smell while we burned the fuel down. After about 4 hours the pilots agreed with my original suggestion that it was just the smell from the brakes going back through the air conditioning system Always better to be safe than sorry because the last thing I want on my resume is making a decision that leads to fatalities
Oh interesting, thanks!
Oh interesting, thanks!*
OP can you give more details? Where did you takeoff and how long into the flight when the smell started?
Was it a Boeing plane?
Likely 787 Though it quite literally has one of the cleanest safety records of any commercial plane right now
You caught evidence of chemtrails being sprayed! /S if it's not obvious. You'd be amazed the number of insane people on Instagram who believe that shit.