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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

#3
Looks like they tried two attempts to land in Prestwick over two hours, then flew to Edinburgh and made one aborted landing, then finally went to Manchester.

What a nerve wracking experience for those pilots. I wonder if on the final attempt they knew they had to force it down no matter what.

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

#5

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

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.

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

#6

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

Closely followed by the ritual lampooning of some senior middle managers who by the fish-in-barrel method were discovered to not be doing very much.

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

#7

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

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.

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

#8
> The pilots had been taking passengers from Pisa in Italy to Prestwick in Scotland on Friday evening, but wind speeds of up to 100mph meant they were unable to land.

> After three failed attempts to touch down, the pilots of Ryanair flight FR3418 issued a mayday emergency call and raced to Manchester, where the weather was calmer.

#1 - if Prestwick had wind speeds up to 100mph, then why the h*ll was the airport not closed down?

#2 - if the pilots had experienced conditions that dire during their first two landing attempts at Prestwick, then why the h*ll did they stick around for a third attempt?

EDIT: The article's a big vague, but it seems to have been 2 attempts at Prestwick, then 1 at Edinburgh, then the last-minute "oops, do I really want to die today?" decision to run to Manchester.

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

#9
post #3

Looks like they tried two attempts to land in Prestwick over two hours, then flew to Edinburgh and made one aborted landing, then finally went to Manchester. What a nerve wracking experience for those pilots. I wonder if on the final attempt they knew they had to force it down no matter what.

Assuming it wasn't just luck, it seems impressive they managed to maximize their (landing attempts/fuel reserves) ratio like that.

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

#10

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

What indication is there that our pilots are undertrained?

I am just a PPL, and that was not an easy thing to accomplish (most pilots complete 50% more hours than required before they are able to pass that test), but my impression is that western training standards for commercial pilots are incredibly high, and the safety record seems to back that up.

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