LABUAN: A Royal Malaysian Air Force (RMAF) transport aircraft was forced to make an emergency belly landing at the airport here on Saturday.
A statement from the RMAF said the pilots and crew of the C130 Hercules transport aircraft were not hurt in the 5.30pm incident.
It said that the aircraft experienced landing gear problems and was forced to land without its gear.
RMAF said the aircraft circled for six hours to burn fuel before making the emergency landing safely at 5.15pm.
The Labuan airport has, however, been closed to air traffic until further notice.
The statement did not disclose the number of people on board or the origin of the flight.
A statement from the RMAF said the pilots and crew of the C130 Hercules transport aircraft were not hurt in the 5.30pm incident.
It said that the aircraft experienced landing gear problems and was forced to land without its gear.
RMAF said the aircraft circled for six hours to burn fuel before making the emergency landing safely at 5.15pm.
The Labuan airport has, however, been closed to air traffic until further notice.
The statement did not disclose the number of people on board or the origin of the flight.
I wonder why it had to circle for 6 hours to burn off fuel, presumably to get the maximum landing weight to below the limitation, when the aircraft has fuel jettisoning functions?
And Labuan is just gnam gnam for fuel jettisoning because the South China Sea is just next to the island which allows for the rapid removal of fuel on board by expeditious dumping over uninhabited areas.
Jettisoning function kaput?
OTOH, if the crew had decided to reduce the fuel on board to an absolute minimum to curb fire risk on wheels-up landing, I don't believe in a C130 that would be necessary as the wings in that aircraft (where the fuel tanks are) are high up.
Perhaps the same meme-ed display of panicking then led to incompetency, or the other way round, in handling emergency!
ReplyDeleteSamax2 macam the Air Asia flight bfrom Melb to KL.
Input from my old Air Force buddy...
ReplyDeleteRMAF bought C130 of different models over the years, so it depends. Oldest model C130s had No fuel dump system at all...if you needed to land with minimum fuel, You just have circle and burn it off. Newer models have, but it may not have been working. It's not considered a critical system, plane won't crash if it doesn't work, so it's not part of pre-take off checklist.
In this case it may not have been about getting below maximum landing weight , but getting the tanks to being almost dry for landing, in which case the related problem may be worse than we think.
Most RMAF C130s are getting gray haired..nothing lasts forever, though they are superb aircraft. Nobody else in the world has made a plane in its class as good as the C130. The European ATR offering is much less regarded, and not surprisingly not sold well.
RMAF's C130 are H models (and variants of H model) which have fuel jettisoning
Delete