The only real question for the inquiry is how the decision was made to divert to Edinburgh and whether that was a reasonable decision at the time.
Ryanair flight landed at Manchester airport with six minutes of fuel left
191–200 of 586 posts
Re: Ryanair flight landed at Manchester airport with six minutes of fuel left
#192> the Boeing 737-800 had just 220kg of fuel left in its tanks... enough for just five or six minutes of flying Maybe I'm just unaware, but it's crazy to me that these planes burn 40 kilograms of jet fuel per minute.
Especially crazy considering the 737 is not a particularly large commercial aircraft.
40kg/minute is around 12 gallons (47 liters) of fuel per minute. Meanwhile a 777 burns around 42 gallons (160 liters) per minute. A 747 burns 63 gallons (240 liters) per minute - more than a gallon per second!
Re: Ryanair flight landed at Manchester airport with six minutes of fuel left
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> But it was a valuable lesson learned in speaking up before you get to that point. I'm not sure it was a lesson learned per-se because the captain was merely doing his job as fundamentally defined. A captain has ultimate responsibility for the aircraft . However there is a side question in relation to your post... When you say "declared an emergency" in your post, the more interesting question would be whether it wa…
In the US, we don't typically call Mayday/PanPan (despite it being both allowable and more correct). Pilots literally say "N777DS declaring an emergency. Engine out/Low fuel/Birdstrike". The effect is that all emergencies are Mayday.
Re: Ryanair flight landed at Manchester airport with six minutes of fuel left
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
As others have said, final fuel reserves are typically at least half an hour, and you shouldn't really be cutting into them. What if their first approach into MAN had led to another go around? With a major storm heading north-easterly across the UK, the planning should have reasonably foreseen that an airport 56 miles east may also be unavailable, and should've further diverted prior to that point. They likely used t…
I thought a lot of airlines had rules to limit the number of attempts you could make at a single airfield in an attempt to prevent this exact kind of situation.
It sounds to me like they tried harder at their intended destination than maybe they should have, followed by going to an alternate airport that probably wasn’t a good choice in the first place, and then having to divert to the final airport where luckily they could land in time.
Re: Ryanair flight landed at Manchester airport with six minutes of fuel left
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
4 replies and 3 are dismissing even the idea.. Yes, you get "some" back, and its not negligible amount. Typical modern airliner can descend on 15-20:1, giving you over 150-200km (90-120mi) range from typical cruising altitude of 33 000 feet even with engines off. Most everyday descents are actually done by maintaining altitude as long as possible, and then iddling the engines fully for as long as clearance allows. (O…
(1) this was a jet, not a turboprop Edit: changed turbofan into turbprop, which is what I meant. (2) fuel burned stays burned, you don't 'get it back' (3) the altitude gained may have been adjusted to account for the low fuel situation (4) the winds are a major factor here, far larger than the fact that 'what goes up must come down', something that is already taken into account when computing the fuel reserve in the…
1 - a turbofan is a subset of jet engine, and there are no 738s running anything other than a turbofan.
Actually, nothing in civil aviation that has a "jet engine" has used anything but a turbofan (or turboprop) since the early 70s with the exception of Concorde and some older business jets.
(Turboprops are jet engines, too, to be precise, with the jet of exhaust gases powering the propeller.)
Re: Ryanair flight landed at Manchester airport with six minutes of fuel left
#196Re: Ryanair flight landed at Manchester airport with six minutes of fuel left
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 . . .
I think the literal fear of death _might_ be motivation enough for pilots to advocate for safety? And if they want to fire you, would you want to work for them anyways?
> I think the literal fear of death _might_ be motivation enough for pilots to advocate for safety?
You'd think, but individual humans are very very bad at estimating risk, and in toxic group and work situations, humans will often take on increased personal risk rather than risk conflict. I.e., they will value group conformity over their own safety ... especially if their paycheck is involved. Fear of death is not nearly as powerful as robust regulation and unions.
Re: Ryanair flight landed at Manchester airport with six minutes of fuel left
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Only issue I see is that should there have been stricter rules to diverting way earlier. If winds were such as to make landing harder. Would just directly going somewhere else been the correct choice to force.
It also sounds like they went to an alternate airport they probably shouldn’t have bothered with.
Re: Ryanair flight landed at Manchester airport with six minutes of fuel left
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which airlines? I feel like if this is an issue we should be naming names.
No way. Having attended meetings at ICAO I can also tell you many details of various aviation incidents, including their existence, are covered by some secret classification. This fact being disclosed caused most of the attendees to lose all hope in the rest of the proceedings. To their credit the FAA reps on that occasion were by far the most reasonable gov representatives in the room, and the FAA are one of the maj…
It’s generous of the classifying authority to send to the ICAO meeting somebody both appropriately credentialed to know about the information in question, and willing to talk coyly about it. Did these additional incidents inform the policy discussions at the meetings you attended?
Re: Ryanair flight landed at Manchester airport with six minutes of fuel left
#200That 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…
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