Something I didn't quite get...

[Guest]

Did you guys see or hear about this news story?

http://news.yahoo.com/southwest-flight-preps-emergency-landing-airport-180222015.html

 

So basically, a Southwest Airlines jet heading from Oakland to Chicago finds out it has mechanical problems, so it literally flies around Oakland for over 4 hours to burn fuel, then lands back in Oakland. If they had to fly around for 4 hours anyways, why the fuck not just fly to Chicago and do the landing there? At least the passengers would have gotten to their destination. It seems as if the captain went out of his way to be an asshole, unless I'm missing something.

[+ sync]

It does seem odd. In most such cases that I've seen/heard reported the pilot flies out over water, if nearby, and jettisons all of the fuel not necessary for the landing.

[+ WmClarke]

Maybe Chicago air traffic is so much busier that it makes that option much riskier. Also, may not

have been the captain's choice.

[mike carey]

Perhaps someone who works as a flight crew member will chime in. My suspicion is that they need to stay in a very close radius of a suitable airport (so no flying over the Rockies and the great plains) but were not permitted to dump fuel (environmental laws perhaps) unless there was imminent danger. Thus circle and use that fuel and land in the Bay area.

[jackjackjack]

Just a couple more random uneducated thoughts. I think some planes can't jeteson fuel, so they have to fly and burn it off.

And since there was some mechanical failure, if they tried to fly to Chicago and during the flight they needed to land earlier, for some other reason, there might not be an airport close by that has a landing strip long enough for the plane to land.

[trav05]

Chicago has a very short runway and it was a landing gear problem and Oakland has a much larger maintainence

Base.

[+ azdr0710]

very routine in a case like this.....my Dad was an airline captain.....fuel has to be burned (or jettisoned) to lighten the aircraft weight for landing.....if there's a problem, you don't go flying off toward the horizon.....