Hundreds of tonnes of fuel dumped over Canada in 2016
Commercial jet aircraft are dumping hundreds of tonnes of aviation fuel in Canadian airspace because of mechanical problems, medical and other emergencies, and even unruly passengers.
Airlines typically dump fuel before premature landings, streaming it through nozzles near the trailing edges of wing tips, to ensure the plane is light enough to land safely.
These pollution incidents fly under the public radar and raise no special alarms for Canadian aviation authorities, including for the environmental effects such as greenhouse-gas emissions.
“From a high altitude, fuel vaporizes and is not a hazard to the environment,” Transport Canada spokeswoman Marie Anyk said.
Francis Ries, an air-quality and climate-change expert with Metro Vancouver, said he didn’t think that most hydrocarbon vapours would have significant global-warming potential, adding jet fuel would likely have a greater greenhouse-gas effect when burned as fuel.
“Most likely, jet fuel dumped in the upper air disperses widely and breaks down through oxidative reactions.”
Yet there have been U.S. cases in which droplets of aviation fuel have landed on people, the ocean and farm crops. As a precaution, Transport Canada encourages airlines to “dump fuel over unpopulated areas and areas clear of heavy traffic,” Anyk said.
According to Canadian Aviation Regulations, it’s illegal to jettison fuel from an aircraft in flight unless it’s necessary to ensure aviation safety and all appropriate measures
are taken to minimize danger to human life and damage to the environment, as circumstances of
the emergency allow.
Pilots must notify air-traffic control and fuel is dumped over designated areas, Anyk said. Pilots must also notify environmental regulatory authorities of fuel-dumping events, she added.
Transport Canada doesn’t keep statistics on fuel dumping, including exactly how much is dumped every year.
A Postmedia News review of 27 Transport Canada incident reports for dumping in 2017 showed just one case in which the amount of fuel was revealed.
On Oct. 13, 2017, near Thunder Bay, Ont., a Delta Air Lines Boeing 777-200 flying from Atlanta to Tokyo advised it was diverting to Minneapolis/Saint Paul because of a medical emergency. Two aircraft required diversions to avoid the area around the dumping of about “120,000 pounds of fuel,” the report stated.