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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

#31

Post by dehrmann »

moralestapia wrote: post #21
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.

Armchair quarterbacking it, but it was human error. They should have diverted sooner and been more aware of the weather.

Edit: there might also be part of Ryanair culture that contributed, but that's speculation.

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

#32

Post by xnorswap »

doitLP wrote: post #5
SoftTalker wrote: post #2

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

Why? Is ATC a problem in other countries than the US? Are they also under training pilots? If anything RyanAir with its flamboyant history of cost cutting (CEO always threatening to charge for use of the onboard lavatory) seems a more likely source than the flying infrastructure itself.

Ryanair has a very good safety history, among the highest in the world.

They make outrageous claims for publicity, and their customer experience is all about hidden extras and "gotcha" pricing, but I don't think they fuck around when it comes to safety.

They know that with their reputation they would be sunk if they did have a major incident.

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

#33

Post by bilekas »

SoftTalker wrote: post #2

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

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

Maybe in the US, but this story is based in Europe, each country maintains a regulated standard and there are no EU wide disruptions that have ever happened to the best of my knowledge. Also Ryanair don't travel transatlantic flights.

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

#34

Post by volkl48 »

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.

Per the FlightRadar24 logs, it looks like only about 45min was wasted over Prestwick, not 2hrs. First approach was around 18:06, and they're breaking off to head for Edinburgh by about 18:51.

If there's considered to be a mistake here though, I'm guessing it's going to be spending too long before committing to the initial diversion.

Without knowing the weather they were seeing at the time, seems hard to say if they should have gone for a closer 2nd alternate than Manchester.

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

#36

Post by psunavy03 »

jacquesm wrote: post #23

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 interes…

And the reason why those fuel reserves exist is to be a guard band allowing situations like this to happen without flames, wreckage, and death.

Having worked with many US airline pilots over the years, this is also why they are so proud to be unionized. Sure, senior pilots make as much as some FAANG developers, but the union is also there so that management doesn't get bright ideas about things like cutting fuel reserves to cut costs without the union telling them to stuff it.

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

#37

Post by jacquesm »

moralestapia wrote: post #21
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.

The incident investigation will surely focus on exactly those things. But: just like shipping aviation is at the mercy of the weather and even though the rules (which are written in plenty of blood) try to anticipate all of the ways in which things go wrong there is a line beyond which you are at risk. I've had one triple go-around in my life and it soured me on flying for a long time afterwards because I have written software to compute the amount of fuel required for a flight and I know how thin the margins are once you fail that third time. I am not going to get ahead of the investigation and speculate but I can think of at least five ways in which this could have happened, and I'm mostly curious about whether the root cause is one of those five or something completely different. Note that until there is weight on the wheels you don't actually know how much fuel remains in the tanks, there always is some uncertainty, to the pilots it may well have looked as if the tanks were already empty while they were still flying the plane. Those people must have been extremely stressed out on that final attempt to land.

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

#39

Post by arp242 »

SoftTalker wrote: post #2

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

I've never heard of any of these problems with RyanAir. They treat you as less than cattle and generally their service is shit, but I'm not aware of RyanAir being unsafe.

Actually, in a quick check it seems the total fatality count for RyanAir is zero, with only two (on-fatal) major incidents (2008, 2021). That's seems a pretty good track record considering the amount of flights they do.

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

#40

Post by abtinf »

jacquesm wrote: post #23

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 interes…

Naively as an outsider, this situation seems like everything worked as intended?

On a nominally 2h45m flight, they spent an extra 2 hours in the air, presumably doing doing fuel intensive altitude changing maneuvers, and were eventually able to land safely with their reserves almost exhausted.

I’m a little confused by what there is to investigate at all.

How much fuel should they have landed with?

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