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"When the plane pancaked onto the runway, more than 10,000 pounds of kerosene came out all at once from the ruptured right wing and turned to mist." I wonder w
by davidf18 7y ago
"When the plane pancaked onto the runway, more than 10,000 pounds of kerosene came out all at once from the ruptured right wing and turned to mist."
I wonder why they didn't "dump the fuel" just before the crash to have avoided the fire. I thought this was standard operating procedure to dump fuel before crash landings.
I had read about the crash awhile ago and as I recall many people that died died of smoke inhalation from the fire and not the impact itself.
- pdonis 7y agoDumping fuel requires good control of the aircraft, which they didn't have. Plus it would have added more workload to a flight crew already overloaded. On balance trying to do it might have led to missing the landing altogether and everybody aboard being killed.
- roelschroeven 7y agoGood question. Maybe they were too busy flying the airplane and could divert attention to dumping the fuel? Or maybe they need hydraulics to dump the fuel?
- roelschroeven 7y agoApparently they did dump some of the fuel: "While dumping some of the excess fuel, ..." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232#Crash_landing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Airlines_Flight_232#Cra...) Possibly the pilots were reluctant to dump too much fuel, since the two remaining engines were their only method of steering the plane. A lack of fuel was the last thing they needed.
- rconti 7y agoInteresting. Or perhaps it would create more balance issues. Regardless, it sounds like it was considered by someone with more experience flying airliners than myself.