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Comment by jyriand | Hacker News Reader

Was the pilot also deadly stupid by trying to land the plane without releasing the fuel first? As I understand very few pilots have the experience to do that.

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Not all airplanes can dump their fuel. Only the bigger ones can. I once had to fly circles around an airport for 5 hours to burn up the fuel, because the airplane couldn't dump it.

They generally only dump fuel over the ocean. Not great from an environmental perspective, but at least it isn't landing on people's houses or farm land.

They generally dump over the ocean because there is less air traffic there, nothing to do with the fuel itself.

Jet fuel disapates in a few thousand feet. You won't notice it if a jet dumps fuel over you.

I can't imagine why any pilot would have trouble landing the plane full of fuel. The issue with landing heavy is the potential for damage to the landing gear and tires, a perfectly acceptable trade off in an emergency.

Because it was the exact reason why wings broke (too high speed, too strong hit) and wings is the place where planes store their fuel.

Again, aircraft aren't that fragile. You can certainly perform a safe landing immediately after take off. We don't know the reason they hit so hard, but I would be very surprised if being overweight had anything at all to do with it.

Reason is known - after lightning strike all systems started failing so pilots weren't able to turn off the engines, but they decided to land anyway.

I am cautious of any "facts" that come out this early, but if flight controls were failing, that seems like an excellent reason to get on the ground as soon as possible (and a likely explanation for why the landing was not smooth). I don't see any reason to call the pilots stupid, and dumping fuel or spending time burning it off would not be normal or necessary under these circumstances. It was a tragedy, and only time will tell what exact sequence of events led to it. It is possible that pilot error was a component, but it is far too early to tell.

I think plane systems should be able to function after lightning strike. And initial failure of all systems - defect of the plane construction (SSJ-100). It's just my opinion, not official words.

Not sure why they are downvoting you, but it's the main version right now - mistakes of the pilots.

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