Comment by cpncrunch
The 30 min reserve is on top of the fuel needed to reach the alternate and do a landing there, so only the flight to the second alternate, plus the 2nd and 3rd landings at the initial destination would have cut into the reserve.
The 30 min reserve is on top of the fuel needed to reach the alternate and do a landing there, so only the flight to the second alternate, plus the 2nd and 3rd landings at the initial destination would have cut into the reserve.
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.
As far as I’ve heard, Ryanair will cut into literally everything (including comfort and decency) for the sake of efficiency – other than safety. Even if they wanted to, they're subject to the same commercial aviation regulations as everybody else.
Do you have anything other than this single incident to back up your insinuation that they’re less safe than a full service airline?
I don't know how true this is but I have heard Ryanair will use the absolute legal minimum amount of fuel whenever possible whereas other airlines might fly with a bit more.
In theory though that shouldn't matter because as you say, the legal minimum should really be enough.
That seems like a cost/convenience tradeoff: The implication of only carrying minimum fuel is that the pilots can't hold for long to see if conditions improve and instead have to immediately go for the alternate destination airport.
The consequence of that is everybody ending up in the wrong place, but not in an unsafe way.
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.
With 100mph winds I could easily see the 30 min reserve being eaten up by the flight from Edinburgh to Manchester. It's 178 miles! It takes a good 15-20 minutes to cross that distance when flying normally, add ascent & descent time and the landing pattern and you're easily at 24 minutes.
Edit: in other comments here, it seems like Edinburgh to Manchester is a 45 minute flight. So yeah, they could easily have been outside of reserves when they did the go-around at Edinburgh and still had only 6 minutes left at Manchester.