I have a close family member who flys airliners. He routinely laments having to burn up thousands of pounds of fuel on the ramp to adjust changes to the landing weight projections by dispatch and from over fueling. The amount of waste in a single error (and they are not that infrequent) is enough to heat my house for a year… and I live within 200 miles of the arctic circle. I mean, burning 1000 gallons of fancy diesel once in a while is a rounding error for jetliner operations, but still, it’s absurd that that is the best solution.

Aviation is notoriously resistant to change. For both good and bad reasons. Look at how long it's taken to get leaded fuel on the way out for light aircraft operations.

It seems like there should be a solution to this though, either battery-electric or fuel-cell auxiliary thrust for ground operations and taxiing, or utilising tractors more to do the full aircraft ground movement, not just pushing back from the gate. Unfortunately it's impossible to suggest such changes without getting a horde of aviation nerds thinking of reasons to tell you why something isn't possible, instead of imagining how it _could_ be possible.

So it's exciting to see companies like Heart Aerospace innovating in this area.

It's unfortunate the fuel can't be siphoned back out and used. I wonder why that is; I suspect if it were possible, it'd be happening.

Also worth noting, tangentially, though - the reason planes are fueled as they are is because if you run out of fuel in a car, you're just stranded. In an airplane, you're quite possibly dead. If you only load the plane with exactly as much fuel as it needs to get to its destination, you run the risk of not having enough to safely divert.

On the other hand, planes also have maximum landing weights, so a plane which must divert or land in an emergency often has to dump fuel for a while first. That's more unusual and not something you can easily plan for, but it's part of the problem too.

I just had this happen on a flight yesterday. Exactly as you describe, extra fuel put the plane over weight, so we sat there letting it burn for an hour.