Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 586 posts

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

#331

Post by LightBug1 »

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?

Really? Equally as an outsider - it feels like one "go-around" and you're fucked.

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

#332

Post by octo888 »

AceyMan wrote: post #68

Under FAA rules this was a screwup. [edit: see my own reply] (However, the rules are subtle, so they can be partially forgiven.) However, I'm not only a dispatcher but also a philosophy BA, so I've found a good way to explain it. Your reserve fuel (the "extra" fuel over what the actual flight burn) can of course be used (hello, that's what it's there for) but—and here's the rub—you can never plan on using it. That is…

> Under FAA rules this was a screwup

An oversight I'm sure they can fix ;-)

FAA as a yardstick? Hm

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

#333

Post by recursive »

krisoft wrote: post #282
recursive wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who has ridden a bike up a big hill, and then down it, I don't think you get it back.

That is perplexing. Of course you get the potential energy back. It turns into kinetic energy as you descend. That is why you need not pedal downhill, and often even need to brake to prevent the bike from speeding up too dangerously.

Imagine a hill with 500 feet of elevation descent, followed immediately by 500 feet of ascent. No curves.

If you coast all the way down the first part, you'll get about 20 feet up the other hill before you need to start pedaling. This is a direct analogy to "getting your energy back" by losing elevation.

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

#334

Post by patrickmcnamara »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #327
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…

> it shouldn't have happened, no matter what You hear that a lot, with Ryanair stories. Sounds like a great airline!

Ryanair has an impeccable safety record.

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

#335

Post by jacquesm »

throwup238 wrote: post #252
hermannj314 wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not saying you are wrong, but both Type I and Type II errors are problematic. What if the pilot is wrong? Korean Air Flight 801 could have used someone 2nd guessing a pilot. They didn't until they were almost dead and then it was too late. Not 2nd guessing the pilot was a really really bad idea.

If the pilot is wrong you hope the copilot or someone else on the crew picks up on the error and corrects it. If they’re both wrong, or if they don’t feel empowered to challenge the pilot like in Korean Air 801, everyone is usually fucked. ATC doesn’t have the kind of situational awareness or manpower to fix these kinds of problems the vast majority of the time. It only seems like they could have done something after…

That specific incident resulted in a lot of changes to the rulebook and some very specific notes about training in terms of cultural differences.

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

#336

Post by gosub100 »

traceroute66 wrote: post #74
gosub100 wrote: post #15

Earlier 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…

someone further down found the incident [1] I was referring to. It was 14 years ago, not 5 as I had initially thought. Curious to hear your take on it. Pilot said "if you don't give me this runway, I'm going to declare an emergency..." which I don't think is the most helpful thing to say. But there were definitely many swiss-cheese holes lining up that day.

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sQuHnrJu1I

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

#337

Post by gosub100 »

khuey wrote: post #61
gosub100 wrote: post #15

Earlier 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…

You might be thinking of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sQuHnrJu1I For comparison, this is what can happen when the pilots are not that assertive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avianca_Flight_052

this was it, thanks for finding it. I didn't realize it happened 14 years ago

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

#340

Post by AtlasBarfed »

mulmen wrote: post #279
rappatic wrote: post #136

> 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.

40kg of fuel per minute is a lot but airplanes carry a lot of people. Web searches suggest a 737-800 gets about 0.5mpg at cruise. With 189 passengers in a one-class layout that’s 95mpg per passenger. With 162 in a two-class layout that’s 81mpg per passenger. This is better than a single person in a car but four people in a Prius gets 50mpg * 4 = 200 mpg.

This is what vexes me about the lack of emphasis on highway self-driving. Everyone's obsessed with robo taxis.

An overnight trip that's automated could go at 40 mph and get seriously good gas mileage. I mean man with four people would probably get almost 100 miles per gallon.

And this would eliminate a lot of short-range flights

It should be a lot easier to implement than having to worry about a whole class of problems that robo taxis in cities have

Post reply on HN