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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

#131

Post by gmanley »

nickff wrote: post #84
loverofhumanz wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I’m a little confused by what there is to investigate at all." You're confused why they should investigate how everyone on that flight came within minutes of dying? Something about the fuel reserves, procedures, or execution was clearly flawed.

Fuel depletion is risky, but not that risky; see the Gimli Glider for a case much more dangerous than this, which still worked out amazingly well. Edit: Here is the Wiki on incidents... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_starvation_and_fuel_exhau...

That example is so well known due to how exceptional it was, especially how the pilots handled it. Robert Pearson, the captain, was a very experienced glider pilot. That's something that not many commercial pilots have.

There were also two factors in the landing, that allowed for this to happen. You're going to be coming in really fast for a landing, when gliding in a commercial jet, and you don't have access to your thrust reversers to slow it down. There was a repurposed runway, that they used to land, that just happened to have been used as a drag racing track and had a guard rail. They were able to slow down by scraping across that. It also just so happened the nose gear didn't deploy fully so scraping the nose of the plane against the ground also helped slow it down.

Needless to say it was a bunch of very fortunate events that allowed it to not end in disaster. In any case I would consider it very risky.

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

#132

Post by anonymousDan »

arp242 wrote: post #39
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.

Yeah there's a lot of hatred of Ryanair given their somewhat pugnacious attitude. But as far as I know they don't mess around when it comes to safety.

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

#133

Post by [deleted] »

coolThingsFirst wrote: post #80
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…

const estimateFuel = (distanceInKms, litersPerKm) => distanceInKms * litersPerKm;

[deleted]

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

#134

Post by jjk7 »

lenerdenator wrote: post #122
fidotron wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have known former air traffic controllers that won't fly certain airlines because of a notorious habit some have for queue jumping by claiming they're low on fuel. If they are low on fuel is something else, but in any case when the ATCs have noticed a pattern then something is up. This situation sounds a lot less nefarious, but it does also sound like they should have rerouted earlier.

Kinda surprised there's no data link for that sort of telemetry so that you don't necessarily have to take the pilot's word for it.

Would that be more reliable than just ensuring there are consequences for lying?

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

#135

Post by kristofferR »

This very recent Mentour documentary is extremely relevant, came to mind immediately. Multiple redirects due to bad weather, extreme "Get-there-itis" and eventually running out of fuel.

Great edutainment if you're feeling in the mood for that. If you're inpatient you can skip to 14 minutes, before that it's just backstory.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vK_7q9tixX4

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

#137

Post by BallsInIt »

AceyMan wrote: post #126
AceyMan wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Update: OK, if *Edinburgh* was their alternate and they missed there and were then forced to bugout for Manchester, that's then an example of when reserve is OK to be burned. (The 'slight simplification' I omitted was unpacking how the alternate fuel plays into the process, but here, that was a key part of the series of events.) That's what I get for not reading TFA first :-/

[flagged]

[flagged]

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

#138

Post by throwaway-0001 »

Better links

https://avherald.com/h?article=52dfe5d7&opt=0

https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/1nzet3a/flight_a_...

Quoted:

Incident: Malta Air B738 at Prestwick, Edinburgh and Manchester on Oct 3rd 2025, landed below minimum fuel By Simon Hradecky, created Sunday, Oct 5th 2025 14:39Z, last updated Friday, Oct 10th 2025 15:02Z

A Malta Air Boeing 737-800 on behalf of Ryanair, registration 9H-QBD performing flight FR-3418 from Pisa (Italy) to Prestwick,SC (UK), was on final approach to Prestwick's runway 20 when the crew went around due to weather. The aircraft entered a hold, then attempted a second approach to runway 20 about 30 minutes after the go around, but again needed to go around. The aircraft again entered a hold, about 10 minutes after entering the hold the crew decided to divert to Edinburgh,SC (UK) where the aircraft joined the final approach to runway 24 about one hour after the first go around but again went around. The aircraft subsequently diverted to Manchester,EN (UK) where the aircraft landed on runway 23R about 110 minutes after the first go around.

On Oct 5th 2025 The Aviation Herald received information that the aircraft landed below minimum fuel with just 220kg fuel (total, 100kg in left and 120 kg in right tank) remaining.

The aircraft returned to service about 13 hours after landing.

On Oct 10th 2025 the AAIB reported the occurrence was rated a serious incident and is being investigated.

A passenger reported after the first go around at Prestwick the crew announced, they would do another attempt to land at Prestwick, then divert to Manchester. Following the second go around the crew however announced they were now diverting to Edinburgh, only after the failed approach to Edinburgh the crew diverted to Manchester.

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

#139

Post by lenerdenator »

jjk7 wrote: post #134
lenerdenator wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kinda surprised there's no data link for that sort of telemetry so that you don't necessarily have to take the pilot's word for it.

Would that be more reliable than just ensuring there are consequences for lying?

Perhaps. If the pilot knows that the ATC can see he's full of it, he might be less likely to lie.

Those who still do can be grounded and be moved into management or take up a career in politics.

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

#140

Post by jacquesm »

psunavy03 wrote: post #73
jacquesm wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The point is that the unions are there to allow the pilots to advocate for all kinds of safety-of-flight related things like fuel reserves, crew rest, and so forth that management would be happy to cut to save money. And to do so without fear of retaliation. And if you don't think the airlines would love to lobby Congress about the regulatory backstop, well . . .

As I wrote elsewhere in this thread I actually wrote software to estimate the amount of fuel a jet should load to comply with the rules. This was commissioned by the airline and they were scared shitless that they would ever be found to be in breach of the regulations on this aspect. It is one of those red lines that you really do not wish to cross. There are other aspects of flight where you are right but this particular one is different.

The main reason why airlines would like to take the least amount of fuel is because it immediately increases payload capacity and thus flight efficiency. This being a cut-throat market there is a serious incentive to cut it as fine as possible. So the regulations around this particular issue are incredibly strict: you have to have a certain amount of fuel left upon landing, you have to write up truthfully how much you still had left and you will be investigated without fail if you cut into the reserve. The good thing about unions here is that they help to make sure that pilots know they are safe reporting truthfully because the airlines can not retaliate if they would pressure the pilot to not report an incident (which all pilots would normally definitely do). So they're a factor, but it is the regulator that writes the rules here and they are super strict about this.

And that's immediately why the calculation of the estimate becomes so important: you now have 30 minutes (or 45, depending) of deadweight + the deadweight for two alternates and an x amount of time in a holding pattern, plus up to three go-arounds. That really adds up, so you have to do your best to get the calculation as close as possible to what it will be in practice without ever cutting into that reserve.

It took me the better part of a year and massive amount of learning to write a small amount of code + associated tests to pass certification. It also taught me more about software engineering (as opposed to development) than anything I did up to that point in time and it made me very wary about our normal software development practices.

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