Tuesday at the end of the afternoon, several inhabitants of the province of Luxembourg were surprised, via our orange button Alert us, of the strange trajectory of a plane in the Ardennes sky. “A plane turns over the Ardennes and it empties! It makes large circles”, indicates Benoît from the town of Bouillon. “The Cargolux Luxembourg-Singapore has been running for 1 or 2 hours over the province of Luxembourg at low altitude” Arnould remarked precisely around 7:30 p.m.
Indeed, a Boeing 747 took off from Luxembourg airport on Tuesday afternoon to Singapore. But shortly after departure, the wide-body carrier of the Luxembourg company Cargolux experienced a technical problem forcing him to return to the departure airport. The aircraft then flew over the Semois valley and part of the French Ardennes for more than 1 hour 30 minutes.
For safety reasons and as required by the procedure, the device had to be unloaded. A fuel dump was therefore operated while it was flying over the Belgian and French Ardennes. “Manufacturers are developing procedures for abnormal situations and the airdrop was necessary in this case”, says Cargolux spokesperson Moa Sigurdardottir to our colleagues in the local newspaper L’Union-L’Ardennais.
This regulated procedure imposes an air drop at a minimum of 10,000 feet altitude. At this height, the released fuel evaporates before hitting the ground, “there is no negative impact to be expected”, considers the Luxembourg company.
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