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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

#541

Post by cyphar »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #475
kqr wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In safety-critical systems, we distinguish between accidents (actual loss, e.g. lives, equipment, etc.) and hazardous states . The equation is hazardous state + environmental conditions = accident Since we can only control the system, and not its environment, we focus on preventing hazardous states, rather than accidents. If we can keep the system out of all hazardous states, we also avoid accidents. (Trying to preve…

> Trying to prevent accidents while not paying attention to hazardous states amounts to relying on the environment always being on our side, and is bound to fail eventually. The reason they had less than 30 minutes of fuel was because the environment wasn't on their side. They started out with a normal amount of reserve and then things went quite badly and the reserve was sufficient but only just. The question then i…

My understanding is that the SOP for low fuel is that you need to declare a fuel emergency (i.e., "Mayday Mayday Mayday Fuel") one you reach the point where you will land with only reserve fuel left. The point OP was making is that the entire system of fuel planning is designed so that you should never reach the Mayday stage as a result of something you can expect to happen eventually (such as really bad weather). If you land with reserve fuel, it is normally investigated like any other emergency.

Flight plans require you to look at the weather reports of your destination before you take off and pick at least one or two alternates that will let you divert if the weather is marginal. The fuel you load includes several redundancies to deal with different unexpected conditions[1] as well as the need to divert if you cannot land.

There have been a few historical cases of planes running out of fuel (and quite a few cases of planes landing with only reserve fuel), and usually the root cause was a pilot not making the decision to go to an alternate airport soon enough or not declaring an emergency immediately -- even with very dynamic weather conditions you should have enough fuel for a go-around, holding, and going to an alternate.

[1]: https://www.casa.gov.au/guidelines-aircraft-fuel-requirement...

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

#542

Post by cpncrunch »

jacquesm wrote: post #446
cpncrunch wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, although it depends what the alternate was in the flight plan. It may have been Manchester. Although I think its more likely it was Edinburgh, which in the circumstances was too optimistic. Too much concern about the minimal costs of fuel tankering to add a bit more gas? Or saving time by not refuelling? Ive never flown on Ryanair and dont intend to.

The flight plans I've seen accounted for two alternates, not one, a significant time in a holding pattern and up to three go-arounds. This was for cargo 747s and a while ago so chances are the regulations have changed by now, also, it may have been due to the kind of cargo.

From what I can tell, that only seems to apply to EASA since 2022. As it took off from an EU airport and landed in the UK, I don't know if that rule would apply.

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

#543

Post by bsimpson »

qazxcvbnmlp wrote: post #318
mmaunder wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Under FAA rules this was a screwup." Not necessarily. And I get that you've caveated yourself with an edit and a reply etc, but lets assume that you're not hedging for the moment. They carried required reserves on departure. Multiple approaches thwarted by extreme unforseen weather. They declared Mayday Fuel, which is mandatory under EASA regulations, when reserve fuel use became unnavoidable. They diverted to the n…

This is the right answer. Was this good/bad? Idk Room for improvement? Maybe? Clearer direction with the benefit of hindsight? Maybe. but the majority of the sentiment in the responses is coming from people not type rated in a 737.

Where's Nathan Fielder when you need him?

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

#544

Post by gizajob »

normie3000 wrote: post #512
PaulRobinson wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The context you're missing is that Ryanair have routinely declared fuel emergencies in the past, and it seems an operational tactic - they want to carry less fuel to burn less fuel, and then have to regularly mayday to jump the stack on inbound, saving cash. That's not covered in the article, but you can sure as hell expect the CAA are going to take another look at them and their operations planning. On this one, the…

> There are many reasons I won't fly Ryanair I swore off them a decade ago when I realised how adversarial their relationship with their passengers is. Until an accident does happen, I have no doubt they'll trouser a lot of cash.

I fly with them all the time and never have any kind of issue at all. They offer a good deal, ok there’s a couple of obvious dark patterns in their app and way of doing business but they’re hardly unique in that respect. Feels like getting a fast bus between European cities nowadays.

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

#545

Post by abustamam »

xeonmc wrote: post #477
jacquesm wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you haven't done so: please write a book. Aim it towards software professionals in non-regulated industries. I promise to buy 50 to give to all of my software developing colleagues. As for 'N', for turboprops it is 45, for jets it is 30.

If he aims it toward five year olds as he had explained it, bet it would be even more applicable to our profession.

Having spent some time with my five year old nieces and nephews, sometimes I wonder if five year olds could run companies better.

(note: obviously sarcastic but kids really do have some amazing insights that we forget when trying to chase KPIs or revenue)

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

#546

Post by smcin »

kqr wrote: post #484
jacquesm wrote: post #470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you haven't done so: please write a book. Aim it towards software professionals in non-regulated industries. I promise to buy 50 to give to all of my software developing colleagues. As for 'N', for turboprops it is 45, for jets it is 30.

I want to write more about this, but it has been a really difficult subject to structure. I gave up halfway through this article, for example, and never published it – I didn't even get around to editing it, so it's mostly bad stream of consciousness stuff: https://entropicthoughts.com/root-cause-analysis-youre-doing... I intend to come back to it some day, but I do not think that day is today.

Your writing is good, please keep at it. I think it would help a lot if you made it clearer when you're talking between root-cause-analysis for software, aviation, other things, or generically.

Also, your train-of-thought is pretty deep; bulleting runs out of steam and gets visually confusing, especially with the article table-of-contents on RHS, you're only using <50% of screen width. Suggest you need numbered/lettered lists and section headings and use the full screen width.

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

#547

Post by rawling »

nomilk wrote: post #488
gregsadetsky wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this one is available - https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/RYR3418/history/2025...

Is there a way to hear the pilots / ground conversing?

I think monitoring ATC comms is banned in the UK.

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

#548

Post by hugo1789 »

hayleox wrote: post #370
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?

Well imagine they had to do a go-around on that landing. Go-arounds are extremely normal and might be done for a million reasons; your speed is wrong, your descent rate is wrong, your positioning is wrong, there's bad wind, there's an issue on the ground, etc etc etc. Six minutes of fuel is really not enough to be sure that you can do a go-around. So now, if ANY of those very normal everyday issues occurs, the pilot…

I think he would attempting a landing despite the issue in most cases because running out of fuel during go-around would be worse.

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

#549

Post by MandieD »

hengheng wrote: post #514
kqr wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to write more about this, but it has been a really difficult subject to structure. I gave up halfway through this article, for example, and never published it – I didn't even get around to editing it, so it's mostly bad stream of consciousness stuff: https://entropicthoughts.com/root-cause-analysis-youre-doing... I intend to come back to it some day, but I do not think that day is today.

Write it as a children's book. A literal ELI5. (Knowing, of course, that it will still be read mainly by engineers. But that's the charm.)

I have a rather over-confident five year old, so would LOVE that book right now.

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

#550

Post by henryaj »

rawling wrote: post #547
nomilk wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a way to hear the pilots / ground conversing?

I think monitoring ATC comms is banned in the UK.

Certainly banned enough that you can't listen to ATC playback anywhere online. I think in practice you can use an air band radio at home (not sure how anyone would know if you were anyway).
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