[jogiba]

Shot video of a Continental Airlines 777 with 275 passengers and 16 crew dumping fuel over New Jersey today ! Video was shot in 1080p60 mode at full 18x Intelligent Zoom 630mm (35mm eqiv) with my Panasonic HDC-TM700.

Vimeo

NEWARK (WABC) -- A Continental airlines flight landed safely at Newark International Airport, after blowing a tire on takeoff, and a hydraulics issue.

A Continental spokesperson tells Eyewitness News, Flight 9 from Newark to Tokyo took off at 11 a.m. when the pilot declared an emergency and had to dump off much of the aircraft's fuel in order to return the flight safely.

The flight had 275 passengers and 16 crew members on board made the safe landing at 12:15 p.m., once the plane had a safe landing weight following dumping fuel.

WABC NYC

FlightAware Tracking page

[timstone]

Bet that's good for the environment and drinking water

Think they'd even notice it in Jersey?

[Ratmagiclady]

Ooof, yeah, that stuff really isn't good for the water. But, what can you do. I'm glad everyone's OK.

[jogiba]

170,00 pounds of jet feul was released by the plane at an altitude of about 4,500 feet, and a strong odor of fuel led residents of several communities in Somerset County to contact either police or the state Department of Environmental Protection, said Lawrence Ragonese, a DEP spokesman.

Bergen, the FAA spokeswoman, said the fuel would not reach the ground in liquid form.
“By dumping, it does not come gushing out of the plane," she said. "It comes out in a mist which evaporates in the air.”

Hiro Seki, 49, a passenger on the plane headed back home to Tokyo after a vacation in Florida, said there was a vibration, followed by an announcement by the captain that there had been a mechanical problem and they would have to head back to Newark.

“It was very shaky,” said Seki, a nutritionist, who was smoking a cigarette outside Terminal C. “After that, the pilot announced,” the problem.

But another passenger, Kwangwon You, 44, a restaurant owner from Seoul, South Korea, who had been visiting his girlfriend in Palisades Park, said he slept through the whole thing. He was awakened by the applause of his fellow passengers just after the plane touched down safely back in Newark.

“I was tired because yesterday I hang around with my girlfriend in Manhattan, and I am so tired, I fall asleep,” he said. “I wake up, every body was clapping.”

NJ.com

[jheu02]

Bet that's good for the environment and drinking water

Actually, it all evaporates before it hits the ground when it's done in a controlled situation like this. Not that I'm happy it happens, but better than trying to land with it in a bad situation.

[Blue]

Its not going to do much good in the Hudson or any other body of water if a plane goes down with jet A still in the bladders. Its actually high grade kerosene so at least it isn't gasoline.

[Ratmagiclady]

Yep, though, the stuff does tend to disperse, (Of course watersheds tend to collect it and all,) but it's not like it's a particular local environmental catastrophe.

[jogiba]

777-200 engine:


[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rac87fY6w-M[/yt]

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a80ark8Rpsk&feature=fvw[/yt]

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XORgDkaV_xk[/yt]

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoUBWEqPu0Q[/yt]

[pxpaulx]

Think they'd even notice it in Jersey?

My first thought as well!

[jogiba]

Someone mentioned that the Solberg Airport owner were the 777 Continental jet was dumping fuel over said the landing gear was stuck in the down position after a failure of the jet's hydraulic system. The tower at Newark also notified the pilot of venting on the left side of the 777 after a tire blew. BTW the Solberg Airport owner is also a retired United Airlines pilot.
I see NJ.com is using my video in their story about the FAA probe of the 777 problem.
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2010/05/faa_probes_whether_damaged_tir.html

[pop4]

The GE90 engines on the Boeing 777s are HUGE. Just to put things into perspective, a GE90 is only about a foot less in diameter than the width of the fuselage of a Boeing 737.

[justinr]

Also worth noting that it doesn't just drop out but is pumped out at a ferocious rate of knots, draining a fair amount of the engines power in the process. Whether it hits the ground or not depends on the planes altitude and air temp etc but when a 747 crashed in the Netherlands 10-15 years ago the dumped fuel caused a lot of secondary fires under it's flightpath over Amsterdam before hitting a block of flats.

[jogiba]

Before landing safely at 12:15 p.m., less than an hour after takeoff, the Boeing 777 with 291 passengers and crew on board dumped 170,000 pounds of fuel while circling over central New Jersey. King reiterated the airline’s position today that the fuel was dumped properly — in the form of a mist intended to dissipate before reaching the ground — while circling above central New Jersey. Officials said the dump was necessary to lighten the Boeing 777 sufficiently for a safe landing.

But the fuel dump also unleashed a flood of complaints by residents, prompting Rep. Leonard Lance (R-7th Dist.) to demand a full accounting of the incident and its environmental and health effects from various federal and state agencies as well as the airline.

Lance issued a statement today saying he was thankful the plane landed safely. But, he added: "Many of my constituents are rightly concerned about the environmental and health ramifications of such a large amount of fuel that was released into their communities."

Lawrence Ragonese, a spokesman for the state Department of Environmental Protection, said the agency is looking into the matter. He said the plane was at an altitude of 4,500 feet when the fuel was dumped, and that Continental notified the DEP command center of the fuel dump as required.

The descending mist briefly left a strong odor of jet fuel in several communities, prompting many residents to call local police and the DEP, Ragonese said.

FAA probes whether damaged tire contributed to cause of Continental flight's emergency landing | - NJ.com


777 pilot ATC audio

[jogiba]