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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

#41

Post by jacquesm »

dehrmann wrote: post #31
moralestapia wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Context: because of bad weather. But I'm truly surprised (in a bad way) people on the ground couldn't solve the situation earlier. The plane was in an emergency situation for hours , wtf. Also, the airport density in the UK is high, they should have been diverted since before the first attempt, as it has happened to me and thousands of flights every single day around the world.

Armchair quarterbacking it, but it was human error. They should have diverted sooner and been more aware of the weather. Edit: there might also be part of Ryanair culture that contributed, but that's speculation.

That's one conclusion. But don't rule out a lot of other things that may have been a factor, for instance, they may have had a batch of bad fuel, they may have had less fuel to start with than they thought they had (this happens, it shouldn't but it does happen), the fuel indicators may have been off (you only know for sure after touch down), there may have been a leak, an engine may have been burning more than it should have. There are probably many others that I can't think of of the top off my head but there are a lot of reasons why the margins are as large as they are.

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

#42

Post by _9ptr »

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?

30min+

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

#43

Post by fabian2k »

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?

My understanding is that they shouldn't have spent that much time in the air (not intended as a guess for the cause). The margin is there for situations where you can't land earlier, not the margin for scheduling the landing. There is margin for expected potential delays, they were in the other margin that should never be used except in true emergencies.

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

#44

Post by jakub_g »

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…

How many go-arounds and alternates are usually accounted for? Assuming EU, high-airport density etc, typical 2h flight.

Does the estimation change depending on weather forecast, season of the year etc?

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

#45

Post by intrasight »

xnorswap wrote: post #32
doitLP wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Is ATC a problem in other countries than the US? Are they also under training pilots? If anything RyanAir with its flamboyant history of cost cutting (CEO always threatening to charge for use of the onboard lavatory) seems a more likely source than the flying infrastructure itself.

Ryanair has a very good safety history, among the highest in the world. They make outrageous claims for publicity, and their customer experience is all about hidden extras and "gotcha" pricing, but I don't think they fuck around when it comes to safety. They know that with their reputation they would be sunk if they did have a major incident.

So it's sunk? They just had a major incident.

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

#46

Post by Molitor5901 »

Possibly related, but not definite, this apparently has happened before with Ryan Air.

https://avherald.com/h?article=454af355

https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/exclusi...

These were not definitive but it did raise concerns due to the budget nature of the airline.

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

#47

Post by Spare_account »

SoftTalker wrote: post #7
cschmatzler wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This had nothing to do with any of that tho.

Pilots are ultimately the ones who are responsible for when and where to land, when to divert, and how much fuel to take along.

Were these pilots undertrained?

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

#48

Post by abtinf »

fabian2k wrote: post #43
abtinf wrote: post #40

Earlier 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?

My understanding is that they shouldn't have spent that much time in the air (not intended as a guess for the cause). The margin is there for situations where you can't land earlier, not the margin for scheduling the landing. There is margin for expected potential delays, they were in the other margin that should never be used except in true emergencies.

Oh I think I see; so is the question not “why did they land with so little fuel”, but more like “why did it take so long to decide to redirect to a known-safe airport”?

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

#49

Post by jacquesm »

deadbabe wrote: post #38

On the positive side, if they had made a crash landing with so little fuel, there would not likely have been a fiery explosion, and many more passengers would have survived than normal?

Air + fuel explodes just fine. You really don't want to crash an airliner. At landing speed the number of people dead will still be > 0 and the remainder has a good chance of being injured seriously.

For instance:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_Airlines_Flight_1951

This happened at landing speed (the airport is only a few hundred meters from the crash site) and the plane was at the end of its flight from Turkey, it did not catch fire. Still, 9 people perished and the remainder were all but one injured 11 of them seriously.

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

#50

Post by jacquesm »

intrasight wrote: post #45
xnorswap wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ryanair has a very good safety history, among the highest in the world. They make outrageous claims for publicity, and their customer experience is all about hidden extras and "gotcha" pricing, but I don't think they fuck around when it comes to safety. They know that with their reputation they would be sunk if they did have a major incident.

So it's sunk? They just had a major incident.

Let's wait for the investigation results before coming to that conclusion.
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