EDIT: plane landed OK

Links ? Source ?

My father was on a plane with a similar issue, they circled until they had used most of the fuel then landed, thankfully ok as gear held.

EDIT: the problem arose a while ago, took off at 11:44 to fly to Vegas and returned after problem arose, circled to lose/dump? fuel

SKY News Link

According to my App, it’s landed.

speculation from me: landing gear fault was that they couldn’t retract it after take off

Hate to encourage anything Murdoch related but live Sky Link

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYlQJbsVs48[/video]

It was this, apparently.

Sorted.

Can they dump their fuel? Just wondering as it was bound for the USA so there must have been 7 or 8 hours worth of fuel – that’s a long time to circle.

From what I heard, pilot shut down an engine due fault over bristol channel and requested a return to Gatwick. Dumped fuel for a time and proceeded back to Gatwick. On approach the gear had not dropped so did a fly past for the tower to visually check. Then held over south coast to fault find.

Swanwick doesn’t have a glass roof.

We have lots of planes fly over the river Hamble, Swanwick is at the top of the river ohhh about 3/4’s of a mile away, they could have phoned me, i’da popped out to take a look 😀
A lot of planes taking off from Southampton heading north do a route up the river then on into the Downs…

People at Swanick only see blips…they probably wouldn’t know one end of a 747 from another

Plus I don’t think you want to be crash landing with 200 tonnes of fuel on board.

If the gear is partly down, they won’t have enough fuel to get to Vegas, the drag is too much….

Not sure it would make it if the undercarriage hadn’t retracted properly.

The smoking shelter in the car park is too dirty, so even if I looked up I’d not see it! 😆

We do know what a 747 looks like. One ends more pointy than the other. 😉

One end is a bit blunt if it goes in nose first. And there was never a suggestion they weren’t going to land. Just how.

This. In fact, just watched the news and slightly surprised to hear that Branson has ‘hailed the pilots as heroes’

My mate flies big jets for another airline, and he had an emergency landing a few years back with an engine fire shortly after takeoff. As he said, it had all been trained for in the simulator, they followed procedure and it went OK barring a couple of broken bones with passengers bouncing off the end of the evacuation slides! He and his first officer were called in to the pilot’s office after, told well done and that they were getting their roster changed because clearly it had messed up their trip routing, but apart from that no fuss, no media, no ‘special treatment’ – because it was their job to do what they had just done, and nothing ‘heroic’ worth noting.

Which is exactly what he expected and wanted. Back at work two days later.

Well, well done that flightcrew anyway.

Interesting fault. I thought that the safety default for landing gear was into the deployed position. If it jammed during retraction, then maybe that would explain it.

Had a similar situation a few years back when returning from Antigua. The main flaps didn’t retract properly after take off which meant that a) there wouldn’t be enough fuel to cross the Atlantic due to the drag and b) the stall speed on landing would be too high to touch down safely & actually stop on most runways.

They managed to get permission for an emergency landing at Barbados (it has the longest runway in the Caribbean) but we spent a couple of hours in the air ‘lightening the fuel load’ which, having a seat alongside the wing, clearly meant open the dump valves & let it all go.

The landing itself was very hard and fast which became very obvious when we rattled past where planes normally taxi off the main runway & kept going despite the braking attempts of the crew. Just about slowed and turned before we ran out of runway with the front of the plane juddering across the tarmac in what can only be described as massive under steer. Being chased by fire engines, ambulances & all manner of emergency vehicles was all a bit “Thunderbirds” though 🙂

It was weird that half the plane was in a full panic & half quite calm, almost serene. Nobby Jr thought it was the best flight he’d ever had but the. Mrs was just about frozen with fear.

On the upside, we got to spend 36 hours in a fantastic 5 star resort, fully inclusive, with a few dollars to spend on clothes, toiletries etc.

Spookily, it was a Virgin flight too.

Edit: The pilot & crew where absolutely fantastic.