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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

#51

Post by fabian2k »

abtinf wrote: post #48
fabian2k wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that they shouldn't have spent that much time in the air (not intended as a guess for the cause). The margin is there for situations where you can't land earlier, not the margin for scheduling the landing. There is margin for expected potential delays, they were in the other margin that should never be used except in true emergencies.

Oh I think I see; so is the question not “why did they land with so little fuel”, but more like “why did it take so long to decide to redirect to a known-safe airport”?

I don't know. As the parent said, I'd be careful with guessing the root cause right now. They should not have been this low even if diverted due to weather.

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

#52

Post by zerkten »

abtinf wrote: post #40
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?

If they have to touch and go, how long would it take until they get the plane around for another approach? In fact, you might not get as far as that touch and go and have to go around. You need some margin for all of these eventualities. The likelihood is low that these happen, but they have to be accounted for.

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

#53

Post by jacquesm »

abtinf wrote: post #48
fabian2k wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that they shouldn't have spent that much time in the air (not intended as a guess for the cause). The margin is there for situations where you can't land earlier, not the margin for scheduling the landing. There is margin for expected potential delays, they were in the other margin that should never be used except in true emergencies.

Oh I think I see; so is the question not “why did they land with so little fuel”, but more like “why did it take so long to decide to redirect to a known-safe airport”?

Possibly. Or 'why did your fuel readings deviate from what was actually in the tanks' or 'why did we leave with less fuel than we thought we did' and so on. There are so many variables here speculation is completely pointless. All we know is that something went wrong, that it almost led to a crash and that it involves an airline with a very good record when it comes to things like this.

Low fuel happens, but this is (very) exceptional.

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

#54

Post by Esophagus4 »

gosub100 wrote: post #15
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.

About 5 years ago before ATC recordings became mainstay on YouTube, there was an American pilot that declared an emergency at JFK and very firmly said "we are turning back and landing NOW. Get the aircraft OFF all runways". He was low in fuel and also frustrated with Kennedy ATC because he declared "minimum fuel" earlier and was still getting vectored around. (I know "minimum fuel" is not an emergency and has a very…

I’m guessing that pilot had also been taught the lesson of Avianca 052, which crashed at JFK because the FO / captain did not explicitly declare a fuel emergency.

JFK ATC in particular has an enormous workload with many international flights, combined with direct, even conflictual at times, NY communication style. It puts the onus on the pilot for conveying the message to ATC, rather than ATC for extracting the message from the pilot.

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

#56

Post by jacquesm »

psunavy03 wrote: post #36
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 rese…

Management can't cut fuel reserves, not because the pilots are unionized but because there are some very strict rules about these fuel estimations prior to take off and margins be damned. And those rules are exactly there because otherwise this kind of incident would happen far more frequently. But it's regulation that is the backstop here, not the pilots.

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

#57

Post by gregoriol »

abtinf wrote: post #40
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?

Flight from Edinburgh to Manchester is just a bit more than 1 hour, so after trying 2 landings, diverting to Edinburgh (15-20 minutes flight), 1 more landing attempt, well, you get very close to 2 hours.

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

#58

Post by YeahThisIsMe »

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…

I remember this stuff being a bigger story for a short moment x years ago, where low cost carriers (it might have been Ryanair then, too) routinely flew with unreasonably small amounts of "backup" fuel and had to declare emergencies in order to get on the ground safely.

I guess they're trying it again now that the whole thing had blown over.

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

#59

Post by paulddraper »

abtinf wrote: post #40
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?

At what point should they investigate?

0 minutes?

-1 minutes?

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

#60

Post by dehrmann »

jacquesm wrote: post #41
dehrmann wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's one conclusion. But don't rule out a lot of other things that may have been a factor, for instance, they may have had a batch of bad fuel, they may have had less fuel to start with than they thought they had (this happens, it shouldn't but it does happen), the fuel indicators may have been off (you only know for sure after touch down), there may have been a leak, an engine may have been burning more than it sh…

Those are all possibilities, but

https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/RYR3418/history/2025...

They had at least an extra hour of fuel, and they landed at the third airport they tried.

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