Curious event ongoing above the IOW...

[HappyHour@TheBreweryOfLife]

United Airlines flight UAL24, which should be flying from Heathrow to Newark, has been circling south of the island for over three hours now. Apparently it is a "maintenance issue"....

See: http://www.flightradar24.com/UAL28/50ff603

It seemingly diverted south, and away from its expected flight path, directly after take-off.

Story: http://metro.co.uk/2014/12/17/plane-cir ... e-4990979/

[HappyHour@TheBreweryOfLife]

Has ended circling and is now about to fly at just 12,000ft over Portsmouth it seems....

[Weybridge]

I haven't heard anything out of the ordinary today on the airport. We don't get told much, but we can normally tell when something is up, staff get redirected, certain ground equipment is to be made available with back up options and repair crews standing by. Nothing like that today though.

[Mickemo]

Flight UA28 eventually landed at around 3.30pm.

[No Shot Sherlock]

At an educated guess it would have been dumping fuel. If there was a problem and they needed to return to Heathrow they'd have been too heavy to land with a transatlantic fuel load.

Some years ago I was on a flight to Egypt out of Gatwick that suffered a bird strike just as the wheels left the runway, taking out the port engine. We spent an hour or so dumping fuel over the Channel before making an emergency landing (with fire tenders lining the runway!).

If memory serves me that was also a 767.

[This Time Next Year]

Dumping or burning?

[No Shot Sherlock]

Dumping or burning?

In our case it was dumping, though I guess in this instance, given the time it was circling, it may as you say have just been burning off sufficient. With one engine gone they were in a bit more of a rush to get it back on the deck!