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

Post by hshdhdhehd » Fri, Oct 10, 2025, 10:13 PM UTC

henryfjordan wrote: post #293

appreciatorBus wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends if our goal is to have zero aircraft crashes. If the goal is zero, then for any given parameter, you have to define a margin of safety well before crash territory and treat breaching that margin as seriously as if there had been a crash. Similarly planes are kept 5 nautical miles apart horizontally, and if they get closer than that, you guessed it - investigation. Ofc planes could come within inches and every…

We shouldn't aim for 0 crashes due to low fuel though. How many deaths does carrying around 3x fuel than what you reasonably need contribute to via extra pollution? We should aim for 1 every 10-100 years or something reasonable like that.

Post by hshdhdhehd » Fri, Oct 10, 2025, 10:16 PM UTC

behringer wrote: post #112

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 :-/

Not really, you should have enough fuel to make it to multiple alternatives or make emergency landing somewhere else. You should never burn that last 45 mins unless you want to make the news and file a lot of paperwork.

Post by hshdhdhehd » Fri, Oct 10, 2025, 10:23 PM UTC

maccard wrote: post #204

jacquesm wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They got within a hair of crashing, there is nothing impressive about this. 30 minutes, ok, you still get written up but this is cutting it way too fine.

> this is cutting it way too fine. Either this is true, or this is why there’s a 45 minute reserve requirement. There were three failed landing attempts in two airports prior to the successful landing, and they spent almost as much time attempting to land as the scheduled flight took. Seems like this was exactly the scenario it was designed for?

Post by gmanley » Fri, Oct 10, 2025, 10:34 PM UTC

gmanley wrote: post #221

cibyr wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I would hesitate to chalk it up to just theory, given it was in the NTSB report and they don't really mess around with throwing baseless stuff around. I'd be interested to take another look at it. They likely go into the material science and physics behind this very thing. They're usually filled with gems. You also have to keep in mind, it wasn't just rubber against asphalt, it was rubber on a wheel that spins. I'm n…

Post by averageRoyalty » Fri, Oct 10, 2025, 10:53 PM UTC

yieldcrv wrote: post #309

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…

in what way do FAA rules apply to operators doing a European to UK flight in an airline that doesn't operate in the US?