737-800 down in China
- Thread starter Feek
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Enough to descend, land and taxi plus reserve. The reserve should be enough for up to three go arounds plus diversion to another airport. It certainly won’t be anywhere near dry.
As it was on descent and may not have been fuelled up for further flights it could have been on the low side but enough for the flight. It clearly didn’t have as much as other crashes as there is very little charring.
Soldato
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There was a video of a massive fire after impact…trees popping and everything
Facts are irrelevant when a juicy CT is being sought
Not as big as other crashes and no black ground. There was not a lot of fuel involved in those fires. Kerosene is black smoke and the videos show more grey smoke which is wood.
Soldato
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I didn’t infer lots of fuel, just some fuel.
Yeah something will have started it. I can’t see evidence of any kerosene in the videos. Whatever kerosene there was there wasn’t much as it ran out quickly.
Something to note, fuel is stored in the wings and we currently do now know what state the wings were in at impact assuming they were still attached. For example could they have been leaking fuel due to what had happened to the aircraft during the descent.
Something else to note, the two posters querying the charring and type of smoke know jack all about anything to do with plane crashes.
Soldato
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Don’t forget the centre tank.
Soldato
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Flyings great, crashing not so much.
It will have had about 2-3 tonnes of fuel at the top of descent. All in the wings, nothing in the centre tank at that amount. Then if there was structural damage to the wings and they became detached or properly damaged, then there wouldn't have been much fuel on impact near the fuselage to burn.
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Whats more the fuel doesn't even have fire retardants like military jets 'cos of cost, they're basically a bomb waiting to go off.
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Random thought/guess, but could the pilot have been ejecting fuel during the descent to reduce fire risk. If he'd hoped to get control back and still some kind of semi controlled hard landing, you'd want as little fuel as possible left over.
In theory they could do this. But depending on their workload at that point in time they may not even have the time to consider doing that and executing it.
And yet they rarely do.