Plane over weight limit for takeoff

mobpd

Yesterday's BA0831 to lhr was delayed departure due to it having taken on too much fuel that made it too heavy for take off (full passenger load as well).
Captain asked for a bowser to siphon off some unwanted excess fuel but after 30 mins was told Dublin airport does not have the facility.
So he asked for all the hold baggage to be offloaded. That done he managed to leave 1.5 delayed.

Anyone come across this before?

questionmark?

mobpd wrote: »

Yesterday's BA0831 to lhr was delayed departure due to it having taken on too much fuel that made it too heavy for take off (full passenger load as well).
Captain asked for a bowser to siphon off some unwanted excess fuel but after 30 mins was told Dublin airport does not have the facility.
So he asked for all the hold baggage to be offloaded. That done he managed to leave 1.5 delayed.

Anyone come across this before?

Yes Aer Lingus Regional flight Bristol to Cork last year if I re-call correctly. Wasn't on the flight but friends were and luggage was took off plus hour or so delay.

Locker10a

Oh dear what a mess, Im very surprised DUB don't have this facility, maybe time to invest

kona

Locker10a wrote: »

Oh dear what a mess, Im very surprised DUB don't have this facility, maybe time to invest

Pretty sure they do.

Growler!!!

Re the fuel truck, problem is that the fuel that is taken from the plane is unusable again as it is now mixed with other fuel. There is now a problem where the integrity of the fuel cannot be guaranteed and would have to be disposed of. Unless someone took it home for the heating!

Happened to me in ORK before when the skipper set up the refuelling panel for the return trip from the uk (which was a no no). The refueler saw that the panel was set up and was topping off the tanks when I spotted the fuel indicators increasing and was able to close the refuelling valves. We were over weight and had to push back empty and taxi to the end of rwy25 to burn the fuel off.....

The cost of this was cheaper than offloading bags, as the bags then have to shipped to passengers individual addresses:eek:.

Tenger

Growler!!! wrote: »

Re the fuel truck, problem is that the fuel that is taken from the plane is unusable again as it is now mixed with other fuel. There is now a problem where the integrity of the fuel cannot be guaranteed and would have to be disposed of. Unless someone took it home for the heating!

As in mixed with the fuel that was already in the tanks of inbound aircraft? Therefore the fuel vendor at the airport cant vouch for its integrity?

BA at least, with multiple daily departs have the facility to send bags on a later flight.

Growler!!!

Tenger wrote: »

As in mixed with the fuel that was already in the tanks of inbound aircraft? Therefore the fuel vendor at the airport cant vouch for its integrity?

BA at least, with multiple daily departs have the facility to send bags on a later flight.

In regards the fuel, that's correct. The vendor in Dub can't trace the fuel back to a batch that would have been received and tested by their company. There is no paper trail. The chances are that the Jet A1 is perfectly ok, but would the vendor take the risk?

The bags may arrive at destination a few hours after the pax if they were off loaded. But the pax are long gone and the bags still need to be delivered.

pepe the prawn

Growler!!! wrote: »

Happened to me in ORK before when the skipper set up the refuelling panel for the return trip from the uk (which was a no no). The refueler saw that the panel was set up and was topping off the tanks when I spotted the fuel indicators increasing and was able to close the refuelling valves. We were over weight and had to push back empty and taxi to the end of rwy25 to burn the fuel off.....

Forgive my lack of knowledge, but what's the refuelling panel? Re the refuelling valves, is it possible to stop the refuelling from the cockpit or must the refuelling valves be closed from outside?

Be handy to have a few empty 5 gallon drums in the back to siphon off some jet A1 for the firebird boiler at home :pac:

billie1b

kona wrote: »

Pretty sure they do.

They do indeed, it just takes forever to do it, would be quicker and cheaper to have just taxied to the old runway and done high powered engine runs to burn off the excess, the fuel would be useless anyways if taken off

maximum12

billie1b wrote: »

They do indeed, it just takes forever to do it, would be quicker and cheaper to have just taxied to the old runway and done high powered engine runs to burn off the excess, the fuel would be useless anyways if taken off

I'm sure the passengers would love that

Would be in the daily mail next day and not good for the brand.

Is the overweight problem a landing problem in this case?

Dravokivich

maximum12 wrote: »

I'm sure the passengers would love that

Would be in the daily mail next day and not good for the brand.

Is the overweight problem a landing problem in this case?

Overweight is an issue that comes up in take off in a lot of aircraft investigation type of shows.

maximum12

Dravokivich wrote: »

Overweight is an issue that comes up in take off in a lot of aircraft investigation type of shows.

I know but I'm assuming as it's an a319/320 there's no issue with runway length on takeoff. And because it's such a short flight that it could be an over weight landing. But probably completely wrong.

adam88

This is probably a really stupid question but here goes.

Why have the capacity to have x amount of fuel and x amount of pax and luggage, when you can't load the plane to capacity and fill the fuel tanks to the brim.

Why not reduce the volume of the fuel tanks or reduce the pax capacity.

I'm obviously missing something here

John_Mc

adam88 wrote: »

This is probably a really stupid question but here goes.

Why have the capacity to have x amount of fuel and x amount of pax and luggage, when you can't load the plane to capacity and fill the fuel tanks to the brim.

Why not reduce the volume of the fuel tanks or reduce the pax capacity.

I'm obviously missing something here

The capacity varies according to a lot of things such as the outside air temperature, barometric pressure, and the length of runway of course.

As for fuel, you would rarely if ever fly with full tanks. You fly with just the amount of fuel you need to reach your destination, as well as contingency and to get to your alternative destinations if required.

This is because it costs money to carry fuel itself as it weighs a lot.

Dardania

adam88 wrote: »

This is probably a really stupid question but here goes.

Why have the capacity to have x amount of fuel and x amount of pax and luggage, when you can't load the plane to capacity and fill the fuel tanks to the brim.

Why not reduce the volume of the fuel tanks or reduce the pax capacity.

I'm obviously missing something here

The reason to have x fuel capacity and y payload weight is to give operational flexibility. Long distance or heavy payload.

As long as x + y doesn't exceed the max take off weight it's fine. I gues the problem here must have been they had full payload, and the fuel weight was pushing it over the edge?

adam88

Dardania wrote: »

The reason to have x fuel capacity and y payload weight is to give operational flexibility. Long distance or heavy payload.

As long as x + y doesn't exceed the max take off weight it's fine. I gues the problem here must have been they had full payload, and the fuel weight was pushing it over the edge?

Ya that's my point was the plane not designed to carry x pax and y fuel. I understand the issue lies with temps and runway lengths etc

Bsal

This is just a typical scenario that could have happened.

My guess is the aircraft would have been over the max landing weight when it got to Heathrow, not that it was performance limited for the takeoff at Dublin. The aircraft must have been close to the maximum zero fuel weight out of Dublin which for an A320 is 61000kg and max landing weight is 64500kg, for a flight to Heathrow I would estimate a block fuel of ~5000kg-6000kg. So that puts if at 66000-67000kg for takeoff which is fine, estimate to burn 2300kg trip fuel taking 67000-2300=64700kg which is 200kg over max landing weight and plus the extra fuel by error and you can see that it can go all wrong.

Noxegon

Bsal wrote: »

This is just a typical scenario that could have happened.

My guess is the aircraft would have been over the max landing weight when it got to Heathrow, not that it was performance limited for the takeoff at Dublin. The aircraft must have been close to the maximum zero fuel weight out of Dublin which for an A320 is 61000kg and max landing weight is 64500kg, for a flight to Heathrow I would estimate a block fuel of ~5000kg-6000kg. So that puts if at 66000-67000kg for takeoff which is fine, estimate to burn 2300kg trip fuel taking 67000-2300=64700kg which is 200kg over max landing weight and plus the extra fuel by error and you can see that it can go all wrong.

If the difference was that small why not do a figure eight over the Irish sea? I guess there was more involved.

maximum12

Noxegon wrote: »

If the difference was that small why not do a figure eight over the Irish sea? I guess there was more involved.

Airline sops probably don't allow for creative solutions and if you're too heavy you don't go.

Stovepipe

if this is an ATR, then they are weight-limited and trim-critical and even a small amount of fuel can put it overweight. Usually, a long taxi will consume it and off you go. Most jets can cope with being overweight as long as they don't face an immediate turnback or a short diversionary runway.

billy few mates

The problem with de fuelling is that the fuel company will only take the fuel from your A/C if they can put it back onto your A/C or another aircraft in your own fleet, they can't take it off your A/C and put it onto a different operator's A/C, it's completely forbidden.
I've seen cases where an A/C was over fuelled and the only solution was to take it off stand and burn the excess fuel and in one case where the A/C was massively over fuelled in error we had to arrange for a waste oil tanker company to come in and take away thirty odd tons of fuel for disposal as it was the only way to get rid of it. It also involved a lengthy delay and an expensive nightstop for the crew and passengers as the tanker couldn't come until the next day.

Growler!!!

pepe the prawn wrote: »

Forgive my lack of knowledge, but what's the refuelling panel? Re the refuelling valves, is it possible to stop the refuelling from the cockpit or must the refuelling valves be closed from outside?

Sorry Pepe, with the mobile version of the site I'm missing some posts!

The refuelling panel is forward of the right hand main gear on the 42/72. It is used to set up the required fuel to be uplifted. It also has the manual refuel and defuel switches.

On the older 500 series and before the fuel indicator in the cockpit has a test button on it to check if all the numbers are working correctly. This test is also displayed on the refuelling panel mentioned above. If during refuelling the test button is pressed then the computer doesn't have a valid figure shown and the refuelling valves shut. In the over fuel situation I encountered earlier hitting the test button a few times gets the refuelers attention!

pepe the prawn

Growler!!! wrote: »

Sorry Pepe, with the mobile version of the site I'm missing some posts!

The refuelling panel is forward of the right hand main gear on the 42/72. It is used to set up the required fuel to be uplifted. It also has the manual refuel and defuel switches.

On the older 500 series and before the fuel indicator in the cockpit has a test button on it to check if all the numbers are working correctly. This test is also displayed on the refuelling panel mentioned above. If during refuelling the test button is pressed then the computer doesn't have a valid figure shown and the refuelling valves shut. In the over fuel situation I encountered earlier hitting the test button a few times gets the refuelers attention!

Ah, I get it now, thanks!

duskyjoe

BA ex DUB is certainly making the headlines in the last year.