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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

#81

Post by jMyles »

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.

...that regulation is text in a database. It can be changed capriciously at any moment, like they often are.

It takes people with ideas and a willingness to put pressure in the right places to be sure that sane policies prevail.

I think it's pretty obvious that as time moves forward, we need to rely on "regulations" less. The root and history of the word in the political context is to make things regular. But state actions increasingly bring irregularity to the world.

It seems absolutely fair to say that, in this situation, the people - the pilots in particular, but also cabin crews, ATCs, engineers, and their unions, are the backstop worth observing and celebrating.

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

#82

Post by jacquesm »

metalman wrote: post #66
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?

6 min, is empty, 6 min is purely theoretical, 6 min would not clear for ground handling or a test start, or a fuel system check,6 min would not do a go around. will interesting to see if they release info about what the real amount of fuel left is, and an authorative discussion on how much useable flight time was there. did they actualy make the taxi to the terminal?, or run out on the apron?

Yes. There is another comment above making light of the 6 minutes as if another go-around was still an option, that is a ridiculous take. They were going to bring that plane in and land it no matter what on this last run, otherwise they'd crash for sure. 6 minutes may not even be within the margin of readout.

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

#83

Post by jakub_g »

bilekas wrote: post #33
SoftTalker wrote: post #2

Between overworked, understaffed ATC and undertrained pilots, I'm expecting some major disasters in the coming years.

> Between overworked, understaffed ATC and undertrained pilots, I'm expecting some major disasters in the coming years. Maybe in the US, but this story is based in Europe, each country maintains a regulated standard and there are no EU wide disruptions that have ever happened to the best of my knowledge. Also Ryanair don't travel transatlantic flights.

Three weeks ago in Nice, France it was a fraction of a second away from two A320s crashing [0] and possibly hundreds of deaths, similar to Tenerife disaster [1].

Investigation is ongoing and many factors are at play (bad weather, extra work for ATC due to that, confusing lighting of runways etc) but also, from French media reports, there used to be 15 people per shift 5y ago in Nice ATC, now there are just 12, and traffic is higher.

Many people left the profession during Covid and haven't been replaced.

[0] https://avherald.com/h?article=52d656fd&opt=0

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenerife_airport_disaster

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

#84

Post by nickff »

loverofhumanz wrote: post #79
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?

"I’m a little confused by what there is to investigate at all." You're confused why they should investigate how everyone on that flight came within minutes of dying? Something about the fuel reserves, procedures, or execution was clearly flawed.

Fuel depletion is risky, but not that risky; see the Gimli Glider for a case much more dangerous than this, which still worked out amazingly well.

Edit: Here is the Wiki on incidents... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_starvation_and_fuel_exhau...

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

#85

Post by dTal »

jacquesm wrote: post #75
gsnedders wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Just reaching altitude again to make it to the first and later second alternate are mostly likely the biggest factors in the extra fuel consumption. That's very expensive.

You get that energy back on descent, no?

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

#86

Post by krisoft »

jacquesm wrote: post #41
dehrmann wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sh…

I read and agree with all those options being possible. Except the "they may have had a batch of bad fuel". How would that work in your thinking? I can imagine a bad batch of fuel leading to engine damage or flameout and many other things, but it is hard for me to imagine how a bad batch would lead to not enough fuel remaining in the tank.

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

#87

Post by fidotron »

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…

I have known former air traffic controllers that won't fly certain airlines because of a notorious habit some have for queue jumping by claiming they're low on fuel. If they are low on fuel is something else, but in any case when the ATCs have noticed a pattern then something is up.

This situation sounds a lot less nefarious, but it does also sound like they should have rerouted earlier.

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

#88

Post by behringer »

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…

With 6 minutes left everyone could have died if anything went wrong with the final landing, even a gust of wind could have ended everybody's life.

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

#89

Post by jacquesm »

jMyles wrote: post #81
jacquesm wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

...that regulation is text in a database. It can be changed capriciously at any moment, like they often are. It takes people with ideas and a willingness to put pressure in the right places to be sure that sane policies prevail. I think it's pretty obvious that as time moves forward, we need to rely on "regulations" less. The root and history of the word in the political context is to make things regular. But state a…

If you land with less fuel than the legal minimum you are going to have a lot of explaining to do, there will be an investigation and you, the pilot and the airline will get enough headache from it that you will make bloody sure it does not happen again. The pilot(s) may not be able to fly until that investigation has run its course, the airline may get fined or warned if this is the first time it happened. In an extreme case the pilots may lose their license.

> It seems absolutely fair to say that, in this situation, the people - the pilots in particular, but also cabin crews, ATCs, engineers, and their unions, are the backstop worth observing and celebrating.

I will hold off on that conclusion until the report is in. There are so many possible root causes here that speculation is completely useless, and celebrations would be premature.

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

#90

Post by loverofhumanz »

nickff wrote: post #84
loverofhumanz wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I’m a little confused by what there is to investigate at all." You're confused why they should investigate how everyone on that flight came within minutes of dying? Something about the fuel reserves, procedures, or execution was clearly flawed.

Fuel depletion is risky, but not that risky; see the Gimli Glider for a case much more dangerous than this, which still worked out amazingly well. Edit: Here is the Wiki on incidents... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_starvation_and_fuel_exhau...

Depends largely on the altitude when fuel runs out. If it runs out when they're at 4,000 ft and it's windy, it's probably game over.
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