AA2444 plane change because of TOO MUCH FUEL??
 

Flight AA2444 (sfo-lax-dfw) had to change planes at the gate right when boarding started. That happens all the time, well often enough that it's not hardly unusual.

This one is a new one for me though. The flight had too muh fuel for the short first leg (sfo-lax). But once fuel is loaded, they can't dump the fuel. Well not on the ground anyway. Maybe at 30,000 feet...

Anyway so they needed to find a new plane for the lax leg. For folks flying to dfw they had a different flight number so it appears they still boarded on the original over-fueled plane. Which doesn't make sense to me for people in lax trying to go lax-dfw. Very weird.

Anyone every hear of a plane change because of too much fuel??

It happens. True, airlines can't dump fuel at the gate but they can off-load. Happened to me on a UA flight last month. SFO-DEN was mistakenly fueled to fly to EWR. Took them 2 hours for the ground crew to mobilize and siphon off enough so we could land in DEN within weight parameters.

Presume it would have taken longer to offload the excess fuel than to locate the alternative aircraft. Good for AA and good for pax.

Ahhh. That makes sense why they can't fly - too heavy to land. I didn't think of that scenario.

Next question is who is at fault for improper fueling? Prolly the airport I'm guessing and not the airline?

If so, then a bad morning at sfo for AA since there were already huge delays at check in because either the airport network was down or there was some power incident since AA's and other airlines were at a standstill with no computers for self or counter agents.

Good luck to those on this flight that are trying to make connections in lax! Now we are delayed on runway waiting for a lane to clear open to our gate. Brilliant.

Odd, I'm had planes unload fuel when they were over-filled, but have never had it force an equipment change. As noted, it must have been faster to just swap, and another identical aircraft must have been available to avoid later equipment issues.

Last time I had a flight with too much fuel, they had loaded fuel to be able to go around weather enroute, but then the weather got even worse so they cancelled that flight and the plane was given to our flight. It wasn't anyone's "fault" that it had too much fuel, in fact it was because they were doing their best to get a flight out safely.

As it was the options for our flight (small station) was remove passengers or remove fuel - no plane to switch us to. They were getting ready to IDB 10 passengers, when they got permission to take the delay and remove fuel. Thankfully everyone on our flight had long connections as it took quite awhile to remove the fuel - so it most likely was much faster to switch planes.

This happened to me at ORD a year or two ago. An aircraft change, I guess due to a mechanical issue, and we ended up with a plane intended for international travel. They had to download fuel for the ORD-LAX flight and it took several hours. One of those situations where they boarded the passengers on the plane, made us sit there for an hour or so, then took us off. I suspect it was to avoid having to recompense us at a significant level. I think we ended up having to spend the night and rebook for the next day.

Yes, too much fuel means the aircraft could exceed it's maximum landing weight on arrival.

Dumping fuel, due to environmental concerns, is not permitted except during emergencies and some planes (airbus for one) cannot dump fuel at all. Airlines will not dump it just because of a loading error on the ground.

I was on a 737 about 15 years ago that due to unexpected and strong tail winds, was fuel heavy on arrival at YYZ. To burn it off, the gear was lowered and we circled with gear down (and slats/flaps, but I am not sure how much) for about 30 minutes at what seemed like under 10k ft. Real inefficient flying, deliberately.

Another consideration is also that the planning requires to be able to abort the landing and safely get back up at the weight expected at that airport/runway.

Which is strange, because LAX would not seem like a runway-limited situation...

Off loading fuel at the gate** is slow and costs money (and in some airports difficult). An a/c switch was likely quicker and more efficient for AA. Imagine for a moment a likely scenario...no empty fuel truck available for offloading.

**and there may be some airports where the evolution can't take place at the gate.

If the airline doesn't control the fueling then refueling is probably not an option as the fueling vendor will not want to risk contaminating his truck with whatever may be in the airplane's tanks.

it also takes a really long time. it must be measured accurately. a lot of airports and airplane companies will not allow passengers on the plane when transfering fuel.

if you check max takeoff weight and landing weight, for a 767, 450000-350000lbs=100,000lbs. that's a lot of gas. at less than 7 lbs/gal, that's about 15,000 gallons. a fully loaded tank truck that is on the road carries about 8000 gal. so you are looking at 2 tank trucks.

on 2 occasions, we had to get off the plane for fueling. once at iad, and once somewhere in italy(all italian airports look the same).

In our case at SFO, pax remained on the plane during the two hours it took for UA to off-load the fuel.

That's listed as a 737, which I don't believe could dump fuel even at 30,000 feet.

After multiple medical and refueling delays after leaving the gate in ORD for an AS ORD-SEA flight, they refueled the plane too much. Rather than returning to the gate, the pilots taxi'd to another part of the airport, and apparently stood on the brakes while running the engines for 20-30 minutes or so to burn off the excess before taking off.

That was just one of many adventures that night. ORD-SEA time: 12+ hours after boarding.