Ryanair flight landed at Manchester airport with six minutes of fuel left • Hacker News Board

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

#551

Post by janc_ » Sat, Oct 11, 2025, 9:23 PM UTC

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.

Not just adversarial to passengers but to their employees also.

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

#552

Post by anton001 » Sat, Oct 11, 2025, 9:35 PM UTC

gizajob wrote: post #544

normie3000 wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

But these bus companies have also been involved in fatal accidents more than a few times over the past years.

Multiple as a result of driver error or no outside involvement from a third party.

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

#553

Post by janc_ » Sat, Oct 11, 2025, 9:37 PM UTC

cyphar wrote: post #541

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Landing at an alternate location is significantly more expensive, so I assume Ryanair put pressure on its pilots to avoid that…?

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

#554

Post by crmd » Sat, Oct 11, 2025, 10:32 PM UTC

PaulRobinson wrote: post #508

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…

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…

I once had a board member who was also on the board of Ryan Air, and he casually told me a story about when their CEO gave a presentation on adding a credit card -powered interlock on the cabin lavatories. He told them, “They’re my planes and if you have the nerve to shit in them you should have to pay for the cleanup”.

My colleague thought he was portraying the CEO as a cool guy and decisive manager, but I thought the guy sounds like a sociopath.

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

#555

Post by thaumasiotes » Sat, Oct 11, 2025, 10:59 PM UTC

kqr wrote: post #486

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

This is why staying out of hazardous conditions is a dynamic control problem, rather than a simple equation or plan you can set up ahead of time. There are multiple controllers interacting with the system (the FADEC computer in the engines, the flight management computer in the plane, pilots, ground crew, dispatchers, air traffic controllers, the people at EASA drafting regulations, etc.), trying to keep it outside o…

> This is why staying out of hazardous conditions is a dynamic control problem

I don't think this philosophy can work.

If you can't control whether the environment will push you from a hazardous state into a failure state, you also can't control whether the environment will push you from a nonhazardous state into a hazardous state.

If staying out of hazardous conditions is a dynamic control problem requiring on-the-fly adjustment from local actors, exactly the same thing is true of staying out of failure states.

The point of defining hazardous states is that they are a buffer between you and failure. Sometimes you actually need the buffer. If you didn't, the hazardous state wouldn't be hazardous.

But the only possible outcome of treating entering a hazardous state as equivalent to entering a failure state is that you start panicking whenever an airplane touches down with less than a hundred thousand gallons of fuel.

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

#556

Post by cozzyd » Sat, Oct 11, 2025, 11:48 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #449

nucleardog wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thirty minutes. If at any point you expect to touch down at the nearest safe airport with less than 30 minutes of fuel remaining, you are required by regulation to make a mayday call. Mayday is a term enshrined in law. It is only to be used when people will die if you do not receive help. In the US, calling it inappropriately can be punished with up to 10 years in jail and a $250k fine. It's protected in this way bec…

What is fascinating about this whole discussion is that the general world of software development is so far away from actual engineering that all of these basics require painstaking explanation.

5 9's uptime in aviation means one airliner crash a day.

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

#557

Post by Schiendelman » Sun, Oct 12, 2025, 12:46 AM UTC

hshdhdhehd wrote: post #376

Schiendelman wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Want to bake your noodle? Because the market responds to your behavior by slightly lowering the cost of flying to fill those seats, demand increases to match from slightly lower income people. Because they then organize their lives slightly more around cheap flights, it gets even harder to lower the impact of flying. Paradoxically, rich people like us (you're a tech worker too...) flying more, because we're less sens…

> leave more room for pricing in carbon reduction strategies in the tickets/taxes that is politically driven and has nothing to do with whether rich or poor bums are on seats.

What makes you say that?

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

#558

Post by Schiendelman » Sun, Oct 12, 2025, 12:47 AM UTC

grapesodaaaaa wrote: post #425

Schiendelman wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Want to bake your noodle? Because the market responds to your behavior by slightly lowering the cost of flying to fill those seats, demand increases to match from slightly lower income people. Because they then organize their lives slightly more around cheap flights, it gets even harder to lower the impact of flying. Paradoxically, rich people like us (you're a tech worker too...) flying more, because we're less sens…

Clearly you have thought a lot about carbon reduction, so I have a question for you. Is a plug in hybrid or EV less polluting if you don’t have rooftop solar? edit: I think I know the general answer, but I’m splitting hairs comparing a replacement car for an ICE vehicle that I have.

The EV is by far the least polluting option. In a year or two of normal driving, even on a dirty grid, you generate less pollution than if you were burning fuel in the car.

Grids are getting lower carbon intensity every year, so it just gets better after that.

It's also not clear that rooftop solar is better than anything else, the carbon involved in getting it to you, installing it, the business that does the installation… It's not very efficient.

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

#559

Post by Reason077 » Sun, Oct 12, 2025, 1:02 AM UTC

tamcap wrote: post #528

Reason077 wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "While you have a large potential energy buildup at a higher altitude, you cannot "bank it" / "save it" on descent. There is no way to store it in batteries or convert it back into fuel." An electric fan aircraft absolutely can recharge it's batteries on descent. The fans simply act as turbines, creating drag to slow the aircraft and electricity to charge the batteries. Large commercial airliners already have a sma…

You can use a turbine to generate electricity, so yes, you are converting potential energy into electrical potential. However, no real mass produced passenger plane today can use that electricity for flight (thrust). RAT is only used when sh*t hits the fan. Even then, it can help you power some hydraulics / electrical, not “store” energy for further flight. The OP asked - in a low fuel situation, can the energy spent…

> "no real mass produced passenger plane today can use that electricity for flight (thrust)"

Such aircraft do exist. For example, the Pipistrel Velis Electro trainer. And more recently, the Rhyxeon RX4E became the first electric aircraft to be type-certified for commercial passenger operations.

It's likely that we'll see many more electric fan aircraft in the coming years/decades, whether powered by batteries and/or hydrogen fuel cells, or hybrids with both conventional turbofan and electric propulsion in order to improve efficiency and environmental performance.

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

#560

Post by xeonmc » Sun, Oct 12, 2025, 1:35 AM UTC

abustamam wrote: post #545

xeonmc wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

See also: various points in the Evil Overlord list[0]. Selected examples:

    #12: One of my advisors will be an average five-year-old child. Any flaws in my plan that he is able to spot will be corrected before implementation.
    #60: My five-year-old child advisor will also be asked to decipher any code I am thinking of using. If he breaks the code in under 30 seconds, it will not be used. Note: this also applies to passwords.
    #74: When I create a multimedia presentation of my plan designed so that my five-year-old advisor can easily understand the details, I will not label the disk "Project Overlord" and leave it lying on top of my desk.

[0] https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EvilOverlordList