The pilot knew there was only one thing to do.

To save her dump more than £65,000 of fuel into the sky.

The flight then made an emergency landing in Anchorage, Alaska, where the passenger recovered in a local hospital.

But how did draining almost $20,000 worth of jet fuel save her life?

Feel dumping, Simply explained, is an aircraft losing weight before it lands.

Anthony is an associate professor at Embry Riddle Aeronautical University, and what he's talking about is officially called a fuel jettison.

Planes are designed to land below certain weights.

Ah, heavier plane is more likely to hit the ground hard and get damaged.

It's got 5000 gallons of fuel, which is about three elephants playing it down, so landing with a full tank is pretty risky.

But most flights aren't landing with a full tank.

They might not be taking off with a full tank either before take off the flight plan are calculates the amount of fuel needed to complete the trip so that enough fuel gets burned off Over the course of the flight on the plains, weight comes down and then it's safe to land.

Ah, pilot will choose to dump fuel on Lee on very rare occasions.

Let's say you have a medical emergency onboard.

Someone's dying.

You don't really have timeto fly around and burn fuel.

So in that case, that's when you would dump fuel so that you can lose weight quickly.

If the pilot has a little more time or doesn't have the capacity to dump fuel like in a lot of smaller crafts, they might dirty up the plane.

This means purposefully creating drag and flying around in circles in order to burn off the excess fuel.

But if a passenger is critical, like the woman from 2018 they might not have time for that.

Fuel jettisoning systems condemned thousands of pounds a second.

Most could get a plane back down to its max landing weight in 15 minutes or less, and it's usually a ZZ as flipping a switch in the cockpit.

Most systems are a Siris of pumps and valves that divert the fuel to the tips of the wings, the fuel streams behind the plane and what looks like contrails.

And, yes, there is a fail safe in place to stop the pilot from expelling all the fuel at once.

But it's not just the pilots judgment that decides when and how fuel gets dumped.

The Federal Aviation Administration has a handful of regulations in place.

The plane has to be at least 2000 ft above the highest obstacle along the route, at least five miles from any other aircraft and away from populated areas and bodies of water whenever possible.

But aside from this page of F A policy, that's about it.

When it comes to regulations, dumping fuel into the atmosphere isn't free of consequences.

But the Environmental Protection Agency just isn't worried about it.

It regards to practice as exceedingly rare and leans into the fact that airlines don't promote it because it's a waste of money.

If we get to a point where we're seeing more aircraft with the capability to dump fuel and we're seeing more aircraft dumping fuel and maybe not from an emergency point of view, then maybe yes, that would be something that the EPA would need to look into British Airways estimated in 1999 that Onley 19990.1% of fuel used by the aviation industry each year is dumped.

If that number still holds up today, we're looking at almost two million gallons, dumped in 2018 by US airlines alone.

Dumped jet fuel is supposed to evaporate before it hits the Earth.

But even Boeing has said that even though fuel is vaporizing, it is still suspended in the atmosphere on the fuel will eventually reach the ground.

The U.

S Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry listed mixed results in regards to the biodegrade ability of jet fuel on the same study went on to say it could be transported by wind and become a component of smog.

So other than burning it off, are there any more alternatives to fuel dumping?

It is possible toe Landen overweight plane.

It happens every once in a while, but it's not recommended.

The Flight Safety Foundation lists almost 300 airplane safety incidents from the beginning of the 19 hundreds to now that include landing heavy as a contributing cause.

Whenever it happens, the plane stays grounded for a lengthy inspection before it's allowed to fly again.

But if you land heavy, obviously you could actually overstress the aircraft, which could cause immediate damage.

Or it could cause damage that actually presents itself down the line on a totally different.

Like no matter if a flight crew decides to dump dirty or land heavy, each option has its pros and cons.

But in an emergency situation, your job is the pilot is to get the aircraft down to the ground as quickly as possible and as safely as possible.

And if that means landing heavy, then that's just a decision that's going to have to be made in some situations.

You really don't have a choice.

You you have to get down.

Ultimately, it comes down to keeping passengers safe.