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

Post by gmanley » Fri, Oct 10, 2025, 5:45 PM UTC

cibyr wrote: post #202

gmanley wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The "scraping helped slow it down" theory makes no sense to me. What do you think has a higher coefficient of friction - tire rubber on asphalt, metal on asphalt, or metal on metal?

Post by nicoburns » Fri, Oct 10, 2025, 5:46 PM UTC

allturtles wrote: post #190

dboreham wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quick note that Preswick is not really Glasgow (35 miles away) and Glasgow has its own airport which presumably was also affected by the same weather so they couldn't divert to that. Between the Scottish lowlands (where they had already tried all the commercial airports) and anywhere else, Manchester is about the closest option.

As someone totally ignorant of British airports, a Google maps search for "airports northern england" shows Teesside, Carlisle, and Newcastle all significantly closer to Edinburgh than Manchester. Are these not places where a 737 under emergency could land? Or was the weather also bad there?

Post by rcxdude » Fri, Oct 10, 2025, 5:46 PM UTC

jMyles wrote: post #81

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.

...that regulation is text in a database. It can be changed capriciously at any moment, like they often are. It takes people with ideas and a willingness to put pressure in the right places to be sure that sane policies prevail. I think it's pretty obvious that as time moves forward, we need to rely on "regulations" less. The root and history of the word in the political context is to make things regular. But state a…

Post by stahtops » Fri, Oct 10, 2025, 5:49 PM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #70

zerkten wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure, but the flight was a lot longer than planed. How much extra do we need. They declared an emergency, and thus put themselves at the front of the line. They had 6 more minutes to do that touch and go around if that happened, and since they were already in a low fuel emergency they get priority and so there is enough time to do that if they needed. (edit - as others have noted, 6 minutes with high error bars, so t…

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Oct 10, 2025, 5:50 PM UTC

MaxikCZ wrote: post #174

dTal wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You get that energy back on descent, no?

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…