"Graham Harrison" wrote:

"DevilsPGD" wrote:

Sancho Panza said:

In view of the experience of the JetBlue flight that had hydraulic
problems on departing Las Vegas for New York and had to fly around
Vegas for hours to consume fuel before landing at McCarran, is it
accurate to say that the Airbus A-320 can't dump fuel and that
F.A.A., among other authorities, has approved the plane despite
that?

A more interesting question, from a total layman, is this: If they
were willing to fly around in circles for hours, why not fly people
to their destination for hours instead?

Depending on the type of malfunction, I can see them not wanting to
be particularly far from a runway and perhaps this was that type of
situation, but at least from my point of view, if an aircraft isn't
airworthy enough to make a flight, it should be on the ground as soon
as is reasonably possible.

--
Some mistakes are too fun to make only once.

Which is worse, losing an engine on a 747 or losing an hydraulic
system on an A320? Does it matter whether you're near to your
maintenance base or not?

In the case of the JetBlue flight, they lost two out of the three
hydraulic systems at one point. That would be far more serious than the
loss of an engine on a 747. Once they recovered one of the hydraulic
systems, things would be much less exciting.

BA had an engine failure on take off from LAX some years ago. After
talking to their technical people in London they elected to continue
the flight. 3 engines working meant they couldn't fly as high as
normal and burned more fuel and, in the end, they had to land at
Manchester about 250 miles short of Heathrow. One plausible theory
for their actions is that it would have been easier to replace the
engine in London than in Los Angeles because that's where their
maintenance base is.

In the same vein Jet Blue may have wanted to keep the plane at base to
facilitate maintenance.

The loss of two system would mean an immediate landing at the nearest
airport, assuming the pilots were sure the aircraft could be properly
controlled. While they were figuring out what was wrong, they were able
to restart one of the two systems they lost. At that point, they
wouldn't have had enough fuel to make it to the original destination, and
prudence would dictate setting down to make sure things were working
properly.