Toilet waste disposel in mid-flight

RE: Toilet waste disposel in mid-flight

A bit more research for you –
In the 1930’s the World Health Organisation (or whatever their name was in their day) compiled a study of worldwide Cholera outbreaks and discovered that there was an increased risk underneath the then used air routes. Whether this was genuinely true or not I don’t know but the outcome was a ban on all overboard toilet dumping by aircraft. As a result there has been no commercial aircraft with the facility to manually dump the latrines for at least 60 years. If (and I must emphasise the IF) there has genuinely been human waste that has fallen from an aircraft it can only be residual dribble from a stuck valve that has been frozen and then fallen off as the temperature rises as the aircraft descends to land. The airline has no control over this and the quantities involved will be minimal as the freezing of the resiue in the climb quickly blocks any leak.
Now consider this. On a 757 we typically aim to land with 4 to 5 tonnes of fuel left in the tanks to cover a diversion and subsequent holding. This fuel has spent hours being cooled to temperatures below minus 40 degrees centigrade and will take forever to warm up again. Now you descend through a wet airmass (i.e. a cloud layer) and this extremely cold fuel (and therefore entire wing) is now the perfect spot for all this moisture to accumulate as ice. As pilots we are obliged to switch on airframe anti-icing systems which shed the ice and gravity then does it’s thing. Then matey phones the papers and says something has just fallen through his shed roof and the tabloids think – great, an opportunity to be sensationalistic (is that a word?) and QED.

Feedback please.

RE: Toilet waste disposel in mid-flight

Thanks Mongu. I have changed my profile so hopefully now it will work.

RE: Toilet waste disposel in mid-flight

We are all rated by other members.

Members have a link to the right of their name reading “X Points”. Click on this and you can see the feedback people have had and add your own. At set levels of positive feedbacks, the number of stars dislplayed to the left of a person’s name will increase. Bst*** like Saab have gazillions of points, others like me have more usual numbers of points.

Its just that you appear to lack this facility!

I believe “Allow other users to rate you” is a click-on option when you register.

RE: Toilet waste disposel in mid-flight

I’m sorry Greekdude, I don’t understand. Can you explain?

RE: Toilet waste disposel in mid-flight

Thanks guys. Wysiwig, why can’t we rate you!

GD1

RE: Toilet waste disposel in mid-flight

Hi all,

As we have gathered it does in certain circumstance happen that human excrement has been dumped as i have read the odd AAIB report on certain cases – but on the fuel dumping situation this is a regular occurance.

As has been sed an aircraft in an emergency has the facility to dump fuel, but in the main this is usually in a situation of urgancy – i.e. a PAN situation. The dumping of fuel may happen in such a situation as say an a/c on departure has had a birdstrike or lost a panel – the most efficient means of securing a safe onward journey maybee to bring the plane bak to it’s destination or another relevent airport – such as many of the UK charter airlines may return to Gatwick if a prob occurs after a departure from a northern uk field due to it’s excellent engineering facilities. In cases such as this where it is more a sake of conveniance over emergency the a/c could decided to reduce the risk of damage to itself and the runway (remember even an a/c the size of a fully laiden 767 could do a hell of a lot of damage to a runway if a heavy overweight landing was carried out, as well as a potential for damaging the a/c itself.

But as mentioned in the BA 744 down under not so long bak this risk is quite minimal in return to a MAYDAY situation where a serious risk to human life is involved – in the case of an in-flight fire the priority is to get that plane out of the sky and onto ground where the fire-fighting and medical facities are rather than circling around in mid-air with an ever increasing fire size risking all life aboard an below on the ground – i dont know if this has been pointed out but in certain emergerncy situations aircraft inbound to LHR are not allowed to fly over london so a teardrop pattern has to be flown – i.e if the a/c has taken off on 27R for example it will loop around to land bak on 09L to minimise the risk below it’s flightpath.

RE: Toilet waste disposel in mid-flight

[updated:LAST EDITED ON 14-08-02 AT 01:43 PM (GMT)]A few other things I forgot to mention –
Last time I dumped fuel it was at approx FL150 over the Midlands! Secondly you will only find the facility to dump fuel on aircraft typically of 767 size and up.
Thirdly, on the A340 (another type I have operated) the toilet waste is stored in 2 tanks (1 forward and 1 aft). In a scheduled config the lack of passenger numbers up front can cause the tanks to fill much quicker at the rear than the front causing center of gravity problems. This requires the cabin crew to carry out what Airbus call ‘waste balancing’, affectionately known as sh1t shifting by the cabin crew. This involves pumping waste from one tank to another to balance things out.

RE: Toilet waste disposel in mid-flight

The media play up these ‘ice falls from aircraft’ stories until the public believe they weigh a tonne each! Just look at the initial responses to my earlier post. You cannot (due to law and the lack of facility to do so) spill the loo overboard. As I previously said, you can sometimes get ice deposits on the airfame that fall off and the Daily Porn comes along and creates wonderful stories to sell tacky papers.
Yes, in an emergency situation you may also dump excess fuel overboard to get below landing weight but it is generally done at altitude and is fully dispersed long before it reaches the ground. Fuel dumping is only usually used in a relatively minor situation requiring a return to base, if the situation is serious (eg uncontained fire, etc) you would forget dumping and stick the aircraft back on the deck pdq and get the fire service involved. Landing overweight is not a problem, it just requires a maintenance check.

RE: Toilet waste disposel in mid-flight

I thought Moggy’s picture of the day on the Flypast forum deals with this matter quite well…

RE: Toilet waste disposel in mid-flight

yes, 29 mins certainly won’t have been enough time to dump fuel.

So, to answer your question, I’ve checked the Boeing website, and am using this page (for cross reference purposes) http://www.boeing.com/assocproducts/aircompat/7474sec2.pdf (page 5 covers RB211’s).

Now, I have no idea how much fuel the BA 744 would have been carrying to fly to SIN, so maybe one of our resident pilots could hazard a guess at that? I also don’t know which config BA use, so I’ll take the mean of the figures.

The operating Empty weight (without fuel, pax, cargo) is 396’284lbs (179’753 kg)
The Fuel Capacity is either 204’333 or 216’824 litres (360’226lbs/163’368kg or 382’336lbs/173’395kg respectively)
The Maximum take off weight is between 800’000 and 875’000lbs (364’234-397’800kg)
The Maximum Landing weight is either 574’000 or 630’000lbs (230’361 or 285’763kg)

Actually, I can’t do anything else with these figures, as I don’t know the payload on this flight, or the fuel loaded.

Suffice to say, assuming for an aprox 7 hr flight, it would have had about a 40% fuel load, about 140’000lbs of fuel

That still allows for 34’000lbs payload, plus what fuel was used in the 20 minute flight.

Or am I just confusing myself? hey, it’s late, and I ain’t done mental arithmetic in ages. Anyone care to comment?

RE: Toilet waste disposel in mid-flight

The fuel that is dumped pretty much disintegrates when it enters the atmosphere. Now that we’re on the subject of fuel dumping, what is the landing weight of a 747-400? The other day when Speedbird 16 returned to SYD after the fire in the hold, it landing only 20 minutes after it got in the air, pretty much eliminating any fuel dumping possibility, unless it did in that short amount of time. As I mentioned on another thread, the flight from SYD to SIN is only 7 hours, so perhaps the amount of fuel that was onboard didn’t warrant a fuel dump, and they were able to land as is?

GD1

RE: Toilet waste disposel in mid-flight

Hi all,

Kev35,

Yes ofcourse I thought about it. There was a bad stench in the air and I needed to get it off my chest.

RE: Toilet waste disposel in mid-flight

You are not allowed to dump fuel unless in emergency.
In emergency you have two choices, dump plane on town, dump fuel on town.
In this circumstance dumping of fuel is permitted!

RE: Toilet waste disposel in mid-flight

No, what I was saying was that if you are only alloweds to dump fuel in certain areas how come you can dump fuel anywhere u want if u r making an emergency. I mean it can cause problems. What about a 747-400 with 100% fuel in all tanks just took off from, say LHR. It had a fire and take-off and wanted to dump fuel as it couldnt put fire out. If it had to come back to LHR for landing where would it dump fuel?

RE: Toilet waste disposel in mid-flight

Hi all,

“I heard at the time that there is an area in France where they all dump their disposal but it seems strange to me as it would have to be a huge area.”

I now have this image of every airliner in France heading for this one little spot to drop theor excess er.. baggage. This may well be true, I don’t think we should pooh pooh the idea…

Benair,

“Does anyone have first hand experience of excrement dumping over the sea?”

HEHEHEHE Did you think about that sentence before you wrote it?

Andrew,

I think the dumping of fuel might intimate that the aircraft has a problem and needs to get down as soon as possible. Considering dumping the contents of the loo, even after I’d used it, would hardly be grounds for declaring an emergency (unless you went straight in after I came out!)

Regards,

kev35

RE: Toilet waste disposel in mid-flight

The same happened in France. I big ice cube went through the roof.

They didn’t discover what it was until it started to melt down. Nice.

I heard at the time that there is an area in France where they all dump their disposal but it seems strange to me as it would have to be a huge area.

Yago

RE: Toilet waste disposel in mid-flight

[updated:LAST EDITED ON 13-08-02 AT 09:28 AM (GMT)]”There is an Air Navigation Order taht states the only thing you may legally dispense from an aircraft in flight is water and sand”

So how come if u r gonna make emergency landing etc you are allowed to dump fuel as long as you have ATC clearance?

RE: Toilet waste disposel in mid-flight

[updated:LAST EDITED ON 13-08-02 AT 07:11 AM (GMT)]This may have happened…not sure though as dumping even over the sea is disgusting. Aircrafts should have system bigger to handle long-haul flight you cant just dump it on the sea….. the waste crashed in someones house as a block of ice, same can happen over the sea….what if it crashes on a cruise liner where people are having breakfirst early in the morning and are paid a visit by a ice block which they have no idea where it came from(of course a hypothetical situation :9).

RE: Toilet waste disposel in mid-flight

It happenened to my high school, in fact. Just 2 years after I graduated, I talked to some teachers who came into my dad’s restaurant, and they were talking about how an ice block had crashed through another teacher’s room. Luckily he was not sitting in his desk at the time! The school is under the approach path to LAX, about 50 miles out, so there you go. Accidentally released or otherwise, it definitely happened.

GD1

RE: Toilet waste disposel in mid-flight

LOL Nice One! So this sort of thing does not happen at all on any flight? Even long haul who cannot store it all???

Yes this house was in Luton I believe and their roof was destroyed. The ice crashed through two floors and ended up in the living room I think…They didn’t (from what I can remember) track down the offending aircraft.

Regards

Ben