"AJ" wrote in message
ups.com...
My question is this: When should the pilot of a commercial jet dump his
fuel in flight? He obviously wasn't going to do that and was going
to land very heavy. Under what conditions is fuel dumping necessary?

Economics are rather important in fuel management for large aircraft... On
the one hand, carrying around that extra fuel when it is not necessary ends
up burning more fuel... On the other hand, it's quite possible that one
airport will have fuel at a price cheap enough that it is worthwhile to fuel
up there instead the endpoint of the next leg of the flight... Assuming an
aircraft has the capability to dump fuel (vs just fly around and burn it
off), one reason that they might do it is in an emergency that had them
landing at a greater weight than their maximum permissible landing weight...
For large aircraft, it is not uncommon that they will have a max takeoff
weight that is greater than their max landing weight...