Response to a plane crash - UK

[ansela_jonla]

Scenario: A plane crashes while on approach to East Midlands Airport in the UK. The plane was meant to be a long haul transatlantic flight from Heathrow, but it declared an emergency and was directed to East Midlands (its runway is the same length as Robin Hood Sheffield/Doncaster Airport's, which boasts it can land an Antonov-225, which is much

Comments

[scribefigaro]

1) A quick google search tells me that a Boeing 747 would have about 36,000 gallons of fuel on board at take off, for a transatlantic flight, and I'm guessing that other planes capable of making the same flights would need about that amount.

It would surely depend on the type of aircraft and cargo, but if you're talking about a large airliner a few tens of thousands of gallons is pretty reasonable. A B747-400 would probably carry something like 70% of its maximum fuel capacity for a typical LHR-JFK run. A quick calculation for a 7.5 hour flight gives me 34,000 lbs for taxi to climb, 188,000 lbs for cruise and landing, and a 30,000 lbs reserve. That's about 252,000 lbs or 37,500 gal.

How quickly would he be able to dump enough of this fuel to make a safe landing at East Midlands?Only airliners that are certified to take off at weights greater than they can land are equipped with fuel dumping systems. The B747-400 has one, as do most heavy aircraft of that era, but they're less common in later aircraft as it becomes more practical

[scribefigaro]

Airport fire brigades will respond to off-airport events but only to a certain distance

I dug up a handful of aviation incident reports for off-airport crashes but none mention which agencies were involved in the emergency response nor when they arrived, so I'm curious about the range of airport fire service as well.

[temaris]

Yes, exactly this. I have family who worked in the aviation industry for many years, and they tell me that if the plane has time to dump the fuel, then it has time to fly in circles until the fuel is low enough to land light

[alextiefling]

Also seconding the ppl suggesting that in the light of Kegworth, crashing a 747 at East Midlands seems the height of insensitivity.

This. I hadn't realised it was the anniversary until I saw that same BBC article today, but my mind had already gone straight to the Kegworth crash when you posted this scenario. Please reconsider.

[scribefigaro]

If the issue is such that it has to get on the ground, waiting 20 minutes for a fuel dump for 'fire safety' when it's actually fairly hard to set aviation fuel on fire, is a terrible idea. Most plane fires don't start with the fuel, and if there's any danger of the fuel going up they will land immediately, because depending on the make and model, some planes (inc 747s) use the wings to store fuel in. If the wings blow up, dumping the fuel isn't really going to be a priority.I wanted to add a bit here