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

Post by wahnfrieden » Fri, Oct 10, 2025, 4:19 PM UTC

abtinf wrote: post #48

fabian2k wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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”?

Post by psunavy03 » Fri, Oct 10, 2025, 4:19 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #56

psunavy03 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the reason why those fuel reserves exist is to be a guard band allowing situations like this to happen without flames, wreckage, and death. Having worked with many US airline pilots over the years, this is also why they are so proud to be unionized. Sure, senior pilots make as much as some FAANG developers, but the union is also there so that management doesn't get bright ideas about things like cutting fuel rese…

Management can't cut fuel reserves, not because the pilots are unionized but because there are some very strict rules about these fuel estimations prior to take off and margins be damned. And those rules are exactly there because otherwise this kind of incident would happen far more frequently. But it's regulation that is the backstop here, not the pilots.

Post by jacquesm » Fri, Oct 10, 2025, 4:21 PM UTC

gsnedders wrote: post #67

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?

As others have said, final fuel reserves are typically at least half an hour, and you shouldn't really be cutting into them. What if their first approach into MAN had led to another go around? With a major storm heading north-easterly across the UK, the planning should have reasonably foreseen that an airport 56 miles east may also be unavailable, and should've further diverted prior to that point. They likely used t…

Post by jacquesm » Fri, Oct 10, 2025, 4:22 PM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #70

zerkten wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they have to touch and go, how long would it take until they get the plane around for another approach? In fact, you might not get as far as that touch and go and have to go around. You need some margin for all of these eventualities. The likelihood is low that these happen, but they have to be accounted for.

Sure, but the flight was a lot longer than planed. How much extra do we need. They declared an emergency, and thus put themselves at the front of the line. They had 6 more minutes to do that touch and go around if that happened, and since they were already in a low fuel emergency they get priority and so there is enough time to do that if they needed. (edit - as others have noted, 6 minutes with high error bars, so t…

Post by loverofhumanz » Fri, Oct 10, 2025, 4:23 PM UTC

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?