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Ryanair flight landed at Manchester airport with six minutes of fuel left

theguardian.com

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Re: Ryanair flight landed at Manchester airport with six minutes of fuel left

#21

Post by moralestapia »

tyre wrote: post #3

Looks like they tried two attempts to land in Prestwick over two hours, then flew to Edinburgh and made one aborted landing, then finally went to Manchester. What a nerve wracking experience for those pilots. I wonder if on the final attempt they knew they had to force it down no matter what.

Context: because of bad weather.

But I'm truly surprised (in a bad way) people on the ground couldn't solve the situation earlier. The plane was in an emergency situation for hours, wtf.

Also, the airport density in the UK is high, they should have been diverted since before the first attempt, as it has happened to me and thousands of flights every single day around the world.

Re: Ryanair flight landed at Manchester airport with six minutes of fuel left

#23

Post by jacquesm »

That is very exceptional. I've written fuel estimation software for airliners (cargo, fortunately), and the number of rules regarding go-arounds, alternates and holding time resulted in there usually being quite a bit of fuel in the tanks on landing, by design. I've never heard of '6 minutes left' in practice where it wasn't a massive issue and the investigation into how this could have happened will make for interesting reading. A couple of notes: the wind and the time spent on the three go-arounds + what was necessary to get to the alternate may not be the whole story here, that's actually factored in before you even take off.

I'd be very wary to get ahead of the investigation and make speculative statements on how this could have happened, the one thing that I know for sure is that it shouldn't have happened, no matter what.

Re: Ryanair flight landed at Manchester airport with six minutes of fuel left

#24

Post by psunavy03 »

dghlsakjg wrote: post #10
SoftTalker wrote: post #2

Between overworked, understaffed ATC and undertrained pilots, I'm expecting some major disasters in the coming years.

What indication is there that our pilots are undertrained? I am just a PPL, and that was not an easy thing to accomplish (most pilots complete 50% more hours than required before they are able to pass that test), but my impression is that western training standards for commercial pilots are incredibly high, and the safety record seems to back that up.

Internet vibes, basically.

Re: Ryanair flight landed at Manchester airport with six minutes of fuel left

#25

Post by bombcar »

dghlsakjg wrote: post #10
SoftTalker wrote: post #2

Between overworked, understaffed ATC and undertrained pilots, I'm expecting some major disasters in the coming years.

What indication is there that our pilots are undertrained? I am just a PPL, and that was not an easy thing to accomplish (most pilots complete 50% more hours than required before they are able to pass that test), but my impression is that western training standards for commercial pilots are incredibly high, and the safety record seems to back that up.

Its arguably too high, constraining the supply of pilots, and the supply of well-paying jobs, resulting in things like Colgan Air Flight 3407.

Re: Ryanair flight landed at Manchester airport with six minutes of fuel left

#26

Post by jacquesm »

simplicio wrote: post #9
tyre wrote: post #3

Looks like they tried two attempts to land in Prestwick over two hours, then flew to Edinburgh and made one aborted landing, then finally went to Manchester. What a nerve wracking experience for those pilots. I wonder if on the final attempt they knew they had to force it down no matter what.

Assuming it wasn't just luck, it seems impressive they managed to maximize their (landing attempts/fuel reserves) ratio like that.

They got within a hair of crashing, there is nothing impressive about this. 30 minutes, ok, you still get written up but this is cutting it way too fine.

Re: Ryanair flight landed at Manchester airport with six minutes of fuel left

#28

Post by ItsBob »

SoftTalker wrote: post #7
cschmatzler wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This had nothing to do with any of that tho.

Pilots are ultimately the ones who are responsible for when and where to land, when to divert, and how much fuel to take along.

In this case, they likely had adequate fuel for, the usual eventualities but the weather in Scotland was particularly bad that night across the whole country (source: I live near Prestwick airport).

Either Edinburgh (on the east coast) or Prestwick (on the west coast) are ok (one or the other or both) but in this case neither was suitable so the nearest was Manchester - definitely an edge-case.

I don't know how much fuel they had, or if they could've fitted any more on the plane but it was unusual circumstances.

There was a military plane right behind it with the same issue that night too.

Re: Ryanair flight landed at Manchester airport with six minutes of fuel left

#29

Post by jacquesm »

searedsteak wrote: post #19
simplicio wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming it wasn't just luck, it seems impressive they managed to maximize their (landing attempts/fuel reserves) ratio like that.

It is a requirement [1] to land with 45 minutes of fuel remaining, if the pilots go under that, it is considered an incident. As soon as estimated landing fuel goes under the limit, the flight needs to declare an emergency (as was done in this case). [1]: https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-14/chapter-I/subchapter-F... is the US rule, EASA has a similar rule.

Exactly. This will have a lot of consequences.

Re: Ryanair flight landed at Manchester airport with six minutes of fuel left

#30

Post by bilekas »

afavour wrote: post #18
the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the problems with modern internet discourse is there is an implicit assumption that the problem of one country is automatically the problem of another country.

Flights operate internationally?

Internationally yes, but Ryanair don't travel transatlantic.
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