They had to turn around and pick up more champagne after watching the Trump/Cohen news.
I’m glad all are safe.
She didn’t parachute into Scotland did she?
Stay safe, Angela! You’re President of the World right now.
Hey, don’t be harshing my Trudeau man-crush!
The A340 has fuel dump capability. It’s likely they dumped fuel all the way to Cologne to lighten the aircraft below its maximum landing weight.
Plane Carrying Merkel To G-20 Makes Emergency Landing
That might give Trump some ideas, the last thing he wants now is to meet his boss: Don Vladimiro.
If AF1 could dump fools it would be an Ultra-Light.
FYI for those interested, go to 11:30 on the video to watch a Swissair A340 dump 50 tons of fuel on an emergency return.
A plane coming for an emergency landing into Philly dumped most of its fuel in a unspoiled horse-farm type area near where I live years ago, and the local environmental folks grumbled about it, and I remember thinking damn, that’s cold. It’s to save the passengers and crew from a horrible fiery death, OK? It’s unfortunate for the flowers and trees but priorities, you know?
Brutal. Somebody did that a long time ago - jawohl!
Fun fact 1: I have been on that airbase at Köln-Wahn.
Fun fact 2: I have been on a plane that flew for 20 minutes over the Mediterranean dumping fuel and waiting for emergency measures to be put in place at Marseilles because both sets of brakes for landing had gone belly up. Luckily, they eventually did get the second set working, so we landed okay, but on a landing strip that was completely cleared of other aircraft and lined with ambulances, fire trucks and police. First time I ever had flight attendants read out emergency landing instructions over the intercom. Pretty tense.
I think it takes only a few thousand feet to dissipate and evaporate and whateverate so it’s usually the birds that are irritated. Perhaps our resident Crow might know more.
May Merkel make it to the meeting safely!
Sounds like the radio failed. That isn’t a serious failure. An airplane can and will fly without one. I know I had to declare an emergency using my transponder once. My mic cable broke. The tower asked my to rock my wings. My wife (passenger) asked what I was doing. I told her I had declared an emergency because my radio didn’t work. She turned white but calmed down when I told her the tower had cleared me to land. The five dollar repair was embarrassing more than anything else. I am surprised that the German Luftwaffe would allow an aircraft to fly with a dodgy radio.
I’m quite sure trump considers himself the world expert on the Airbus plane and the dissipation of jet fuel. Likely he could write the math formula on a napkin from memory. He’s got the world’s best memory y’know… bigly intelligent too. Said so hisownself he did.
Not that these are things I’d want to experience, but they remind me yet again that you always seem to lead such an exciting life!
Tru-dat!
Yeah, it’s weird, isn’t it? The funniest thing with the Marseilles story was that I was with some colleagues on the way to a week-long meeting of an EU project consortium focused on emergency management…