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.
[1]: https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-14/chapter-I/subchapter-F... is the US rule, EASA has a similar rule.
Either this is true, or this is why there’s a 45 minute reserve requirement. There were three failed landing attempts in two airports prior to the successful landing, and they spent almost as much time attempting to land as the scheduled flight took.
Seems like this was exactly the scenario it was designed for?
He was low in fuel and also frustrated with Kennedy ATC because he declared "minimum fuel" earlier and was still getting vectored around. (I know "minimum fuel" is not an emergency and has a very precise meaning).
They must have been very close to running out. But it was a valuable lesson learned in speaking up before you get to that point.
JFK ATC in particular has an enormous workload with many international flights, combined with direct, even conflictual at times, NY communication style. It puts the onus on the pilot for conveying the message to ATC, rather than ATC for extracting the message from the pilot.
For comparison, this is what can happen when the pilots are not that assertive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avianca_Flight_052
I'm not sure it was a lesson learned per-se because the captain was merely doing his job as fundamentally defined.
A captain has ultimate responsibility for the aircraft.
However there is a side question in relation to your post...
When you say "declared an emergency" in your post, the more interesting question would be whether it was actually formally declared by the captain (i.e. "MAYDAY") or whether the captain was merely "working with" ATC at a lower level, maybe "PAN" or maybe just informal "prioritised".
If the captain DID declare "MAYDAY" earlier in the timeframe then yes, Kennedy would have a lot to answer for if they were spending excessive time vectoring around.
But if the captain did not formally declare and then came back later and started bossing Kennedy around, that would be a different set of questions, focused on the captain.
But I'm truly surprised (in a bad way) people on the ground couldn't solve the situation earlier. The plane was in an emergency situation for hours, wtf.
Also, the airport density in the UK is high, they should have been diverted since before the first attempt, as it has happened to me and thousands of flights every single day around the world.
Edit: there might also be part of Ryanair culture that contributed, but that's speculation.
https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/RYR3418/history/2025...
They had at least an extra hour of fuel, and they landed at the third airport they tried.
This is fairly common in GA and there are cases where it has happened in scheduled flights as well. That's why fuel sampling is common practice.
If there's considered to be a mistake here though, I'm guessing it's going to be spending too long before committing to the initial diversion.
Without knowing the weather they were seeing at the time, seems hard to say if they should have gone for a closer 2nd alternate than Manchester.
> 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.
A US gallon of Kerosene weights approx 6.5 lbs
I'd be very wary to get ahead of the investigation and make speculative statements on how this could have happened, the one thing that I know for sure is that it shouldn't have happened, no matter what.
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 reserves to cut costs without the union telling them to stuff it.
And if you don't think the airlines would love to lobby Congress about the regulatory backstop, well . . .
The main reason why airlines would like to take the least amount of fuel is because it immediately increases payload capacity and thus flight efficiency. This being a cut-throat market there is a serious incentive to cut it as fine as possible. So the regulations around this particular issue are incredibly strict: you have to have a certain amount of fuel left upon landing, you have to write up truthfully how much you still had left and you will be investigated without fail if you cut into the reserve. The good thing about unions here is that they help to make sure that pilots know they are safe reporting truthfully because the airlines can not retaliate if they would pressure the pilot to not report an incident (which all pilots would normally definitely do). So they're a factor, but it is the regulator that writes the rules here and they are super strict about this.
And that's immediately why the calculation of the estimate becomes so important: you now have 30 minutes (or 45, depending) of deadweight + the deadweight for two alternates and an x amount of time in a holding pattern, plus up to three go-arounds. That really adds up, so you have to do your best to get the calculation as close as possible to what it will be in practice without ever cutting into that reserve.
It took me the better part of a year and massive amount of learning to write a small amount of code + associated tests to pass certification. It also taught me more about software engineering (as opposed to development) than anything I did up to that point in time and it made me very wary about our normal software development practices.
You'd think, but individual humans are very very bad at estimating risk, and in toxic group and work situations, humans will often assume increased risk rather than risk conflict ... especially if their paycheck is involved. Fear of death is not nearly as powerful as robust regulation and unions.
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.
> 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.
Of course the pilots are the backstop, and the unions are theirs, so they can make necessary calls the money doesn't like.
That's a funny way to phrase it. I'd probably go the other way and say "sure, FAANG developers make as much as some pilots..."
Those pilots have hundreds of lives on the line every day.
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?
Low fuel happens, but this is (very) exceptional.
They landed safely, that is what is important. There is great cost to have extra fuel on board, you need enough, but it doesn't look to me like more was needed. Unless an investigation determines that this emergency would happen often on that route - even then it seems like they should have been told to land in France or someplace long before they got to their intended destination to discover landing was impossible.
6 minutes is way out of the comfort zone. They might not have made it in that case.
So I don't think 220kg is enough to do a go-around in a 737 (well, a go-around would've been initiated with a bit more than 220kg in the tank - they burned some taxing to the gate - but you get my point.) I've read around 2,300kg for takeoff and climb on a normal flight in a 737-8. A go-around is going to use close to that, it's a full power takeoff but a much shorter climb phase up to whatever procedure is set for the airport and then what ATC tells you.
I just flew 172s but even with those little things we were told, your reserve is never to be used.
These people came very, very close to a disaster. Fortunately they had as much luck left as they did fuel.
ChatGPT suggests way lower numbers for take off / climb in a 737-8.
600-1000kg from brake to reaching cruise.
https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=4d2256&lat=54.720&lon=-... is the track of this flight.
Went around at EDI at about 19:10Z, landed at about 19:51Z, so about a 41 minute flight.
0 minutes?
-1 minutes?
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 the majority of their final fuel reserve on the secondary diversion from EDI to MAN, presumably having planned to land at their alternate (EDI) around the time they reached the final fuel reserve.
Any CAA report into this, if there is one produced, is going to be interesting, because there's multiple people having made multiple decisions that led to this.
One of the challenges of aeronautics is the efficient disposition of the potential energy without converting it all into kinetic energy (ie speed) so that the landing happens at an optimally low speed - thus giving you a chance to brake and slow down at the end.
It's not currently feasible to harvest it into fuel. It's (very very nearly) all lost to drag, on purpose.
Yes, you get "some" back, and its not negligible amount. Typical modern airliner can descend on 15-20:1, giving you over 150-200km (90-120mi) range from typical cruising altitude of 33 000 feet even with engines off. Most everyday descents are actually done by maintaining altitude as long as possible, and then iddling the engines fully for as long as clearance allows. (Ofc you then use engines as you geat nearer, because its safer to be a little low when stabilizing on approach, than a little high)
Thanks to turbofans better efficiency + less drag at higher altitude its actually more fuel economical to command full thrust and gain altitude quickly, than slower climb, or maintaining altitude (which goes against our intuition from cars, where if you wanna get far, you never give full throttle).
But theres still some drag, so you dont get everything back, so you generally want to avoid murking in low altitudes as long as possible. Full thrust repeatedly at lowest altitudes (from failed go arounds) is the least economical part of flight, so you want to avoid those if possible. But its true that the altitude you gain is equivalent to "banking" the energy, just not all of it.
(2) fuel burned stays burned, you don't 'get it back'
(3) the altitude gained may have been adjusted to account for the low fuel situation
(4) the winds are a major factor here, far larger than the fact that 'what goes up must come down', something that is already taken into account when computing the fuel reserve in the first place.
Actually, nothing in civil aviation that has a "jet engine" has used anything but a turbofan (or turboprop) since the early 70s with the exception of Concorde and some older business jets.
(Turboprops are jet engines, too, to be precise, with the jet of exhaust gases powering the propeller.)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CFM_International_CFM56#CFM56-...
(2) I know glider pilots who fly without any fuel at all, once aloft… sounds not unlike the 150-200km glide range that @MaxikCZ mentions at idle from cruising altitude.
[0] https://aeroreport.de/en/good-to-know/how-does-a-turbofan-en...
[1] e.g. https://ciechanow.ski/airfoil/
So the entire climb "up", you are also wasting energy fighting the thick air. On the way back "down", that air again fights you, even though you are basically at idle thrust.
Your fuel reserves are calculated for cruise flight, so time spent doing low altitude flying is already at a disadvantage. "Two hours of reserves" is significantly less than that spent holding at a few thousand feet. Fuel efficiency while climbing is yet again dramatically worse
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.
It sounds to me like they tried harder at their intended destination than maybe they should have, followed by going to an alternate airport that probably wasn’t a good choice in the first place, and then having to divert to the final airport where luckily they could land in time.
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.
Edit: Here is the Wiki on incidents... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_starvation_and_fuel_exhau...
The Gimli Glider was a case of many items of luck lining up.
From "all engine failure is never expected and not covered in training" to "Pearson was an experienced glider pilot familiar with techniques rarely needed in commercial flights" to the amount of maneuvers they had to execute on a barely responding aircraft
There were also two factors in the landing, that allowed for this to happen. You're going to be coming in really fast for a landing, when gliding in a commercial jet, and you don't have access to your reverse thrusters to slow it down. There was a repurposed runway, that they used to land, that just happened to have been used as a drag racing track and had a guard rail. They were able to slow down by scraping across that. It also just so happened the nose gear didn't deploy fully so scraping the nose of the plane against the ground also helped slow it down.
Needless to say it was a bunch of very fortunate events that allowed it to not end in disaster. In any case I would consider it very risky.
Rubber likely grips much better than metal, however three wheels have massively lower surface area than the body of the plane, or even a small section of it like the head.
Of course we don't land tireless for other reasons (metal transfers heat exceptionally well unlike rubber, paint doesn't survive high speed impact, and it tends to deform upon impact with anything, making any future flights unsafe), but the fastest way to slow down if you don't care about safety or comfort would probably be to land tireless, if you could introduce some rotational spin, that might be faster (more force directed in multiple directions).
You also have to keep in mind, it wasn't just rubber against asphalt, it was rubber on wheel that spins. I'm not sure if the front nose gear on a 767 has any brakes but even if it did, I can't imagine it would be sufficient at the speeds they were going.
If you ever cut into your safety allowance, you've already fucked up. Your expected design criteria should account for all use cases, nominal or worst-case. The safety factor is there for safety, it is never intended to be used.
One of the most important aspects of taking safety seriously is that you do not just investigate things which had an impact, but that you proactively investigate near misses (as was the case here) and even potential incidents.
A plane with 6 minutes of fuel left is always a risk to every person on board and potentially others if an emergency landing becomes the only option.
The investigations into incidents aren't usually particularly long or noteworthy and often the corrective action will be to brief X on dangers of Y, or some manner of bulletin distributed to operators.
It may even be the answer is "no, everything went as well as it possibly could have, and adding more reserve fuel to every flight would be unacceptably wasteful, so oh well", but at a minimum they'll probably recommend even more fuel on certain flights into risky weather.
Does the estimation change depending on weather forecast, season of the year etc?
> Does the estimation change depending on weather forecast, season of the year etc?
Yes. There are many factors that go into this including trade winds (which vary quite a bit seasonally and which can make a huge difference), time of day, altitude of the various legs, route flown, weather, distance to alternates, altitude of the place of departure and altitude of the place where you are landing, weight of the aircraft, engine type, engine hours since last overhaul, weight of passengers, luggage and cargo, angle-of-attack and so on. The software I wrote was a couple of thousand lines just to output a single number and 10x as much code for tests, and it was just one module in a much larger pre-flight application.
This made me think about the fuel itself: is aviation fuel globally standardised and the same quality in every single airport in the world?
There are three different kinds of jet fuel and all are produced to strict standards, and then there are allowances for ppm water contamination (very low, to ensure the fuel system will never freeze at altitude or in freezing weather on the ground or at lower altitude).
I guess they're trying it again now that the whole thing had blown over.
This situation sounds a lot less nefarious, but it does also sound like they should have rerouted earlier.
Edit: I was recalling articles claiming the company purposely fueling less than other airlines in order to increase their rate of claims for priority landing to have a better "on time" statistics.
This forum post disputes that: https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/38501/is-it-tru...
Having attended meetings at ICAO I can also tell you many details of various aviation incidents, including their existence, are covered by some secret classification. This fact being disclosed caused most of the attendees to lose all hope in the rest of the proceedings. To their credit the FAA reps on that occasion were by far the most reasonable gov representatives in the room, and the FAA are one of the major voices pushing for greater transparency on it.
You would have to have secret clearance to know which ones
The whole subject of discussion prior to this was efforts to improve data sharing wrt incidents.
The pilot in charge has to file a writeup.
When someone accepts the writeup, there's a random chance it's selected for followup. If/when they discover there was enough fuel, it will affect the career(s) of person(s) involved.
First, generally, people don't like having to do paperwork, and especially don't like doing paperwork to help you land a little quicker.
While one time may not be a fireable offense, you will find you career affected in the number of ways people can find to be uncooperative with you, or not support you when you attempt to advance your career within the company.
Developing a habit would lead your interlocutors to escalate the situation, which would lead to discipline up to and including the company firing person(s) involved.
Dispatch knows how much fuel they say they put in.
Your flight time, speeds, and profile are known.
ACARS may be reporting fuel use throughout the flight.
etc, etc, etc.
Those who still do can be grounded and be moved into management or take up a career in politics.
It is a system built out of very regulated parts, very professional people, and tight controls.
Pilots are encouraged to be very forward and proactive about fuel situations because of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avianca_Flight_052
Minimum fuel requirements are calculated as "Time of fuel for cruise to certain points", which is usually good enough, but if an Airport is stupid busy, or has bad wind patterns, just a couple go-arounds will chew through your fuel way faster than the regulation expects.
Turbofan engines are also dramatically less efficient at low altitude than high altitude cruise. So holding at low altitudes because a congested airport is dealing with traffic will chew through your reserves much faster than you expect.
Ryanair flies short hops to congested airports. They will have relatively low reserves, and you should expect them to run into "Hey we are low on fuel" more often than international flights for example.
Locally, this is true. Globally, not so much. I remember my friend's vivid description of a flight taken in Nepal. It was absolutely wild.
[1] In one case someone mixed imperial and metric unix, and instead of $something-kilograms, they put only $something-pounds of fuel.
Also, that sort of telemetry does exist for most major airlines, however it goes via satellite to the airline not the ATC.
They did reroute earlier. It was 2 failed attempts on Prestwick (Glasgow), 45 minutes in the landing pattern, then they diverted to Edinburgh (15 minute flight), a failed attempt at Edinburgh (~5-10 minutes), and then they diverted to Manchester (45 minute flight) and landed successfully there. Likely they hit their reserve just as the Edinburgh landing failed and decided to fly to Manchester, with clearer skies, rather than risk another failure in their reserve.
IMHO the only questionable pilot decision here is to divert to Edinburgh rather than Manchester immediately. But this is somewhat understandable: first of all, dropping the passengers off at Edinburgh (an hour drive from Glasgow) is significantly less costly and less inconvenient than dropping them at Manchester (an overnight bus ride). Second, if the Edinburgh landing had been successful they would not have eaten into their reserve and no investigation would've been needed. Third, the Monday-morning quarterbacking could've easily gone the other direction if they had diverted to Manchester ("Why did you choose an airport 178 miles away and risk eating into your fuel reserve when Edinburgh was right there?")
[1] https://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/fr3418#3c7f91f4
That's likely, these places are not very far apart. And presumably if you have at most one landing attempt remaining you don't want to be taking any more chances.
It is almost fascinating how humans will stoop to dishonesty even in banal situations - and not just any humans, but pilots, who should be subject to at least some vetting.
Maybe planes should be retrofitted as to transmit their actual fuel state including a qualified assessment in minutes to the ATC. Not just because of the cheaters, but also to warn the ATC in the rare case that some plane crew isn't very assertive about their dwindling fuel, or hasn't noticed the problem.
It would make prioritizing the queue a bit more neutral.
If I designed such a system from scratch, "remaining fuel" would be part of my telemetry.
For instance:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_Airlines_Flight_1951
This happened at landing speed (the airport is only a few hundred meters from the crash site) and the plane was at the end of its flight from Turkey, it did not catch fire. Still, 9 people perished and the remainder were all but one injured 11 of them seriously.
This[1] kind of crash landing is very rare (in that case there was no fire despite being immediately after take off, perhaps because of the cold). Normally an outcome like this is only reasonable to expect if you actually reach a runway despite being out of fuel. Like Gimli[2].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandinavian_Airlines_System_F...
https://avherald.com/h?article=454af355
https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/exclusi...
These were not definitive but it did raise concerns due to the budget nature of the airline.
Your reserve fuel (the "extra" fuel over what the actual flight burn) can of course be used (hello, that's what it's there for) but—and here's the rub—you can never plan on using it.
That is to say, in this case, when they missed their first or second approach, they CANNOT say, "We'll use our reserve fuel and make another go at it" because that would be intentionally planning to burn your reserve.
You may only dip into your reserve when you have no other choice. In this case, when the only fuel they had left was reserve, they are obligated by law to proceed to the alternate airport, which clearly they did not do [correction: they did do the proper thing; see my 2nd reply below]. No bueno.
[this is a slight simplification (minor details omitted for brevity) but the kernel of the issue is properly described]
Is that what happened? That's not in the article, what's the source?
And other comments here are saying the third attempt was in Edinburgh, so they were already trying to land anywhere possible by the third attempt.
At what point are you saying they chose to plan on using reserves when they still had any option for landing without reserves?
The sequence was [depart Pisa => Prestwick (2 missed approaches) => proceed to Edinburgh (1 missed); declare Mayday fuel => proceed to Manchester (land on first attempt)]
EDIT and you of most of the commenters here, with your industry background, are better placed to offer an opinion!
For me, it was. I have trouble forming a mental model of itineraries so I’m grateful for the summary.
Presenting information in different ways is useful (and the method of display can offer informational insights itself). And for different users it might help parse larger connections. And by using the LLM to summarize just that one facet of the problem (itinerary and sequence) and sharing it here, they’ve contributed in a meaningful way. It may not have warranted a response. But it added to overall understanding of the problem space to help facilitate discussion. And they did well enough by citing that the info came from an LLM. They didn’t bypass the intent of the site. They added to it and fell right in line with that intent.
Even though I’ve read the entire article, I found it very difficult to mentally visualize and ended up not noticing that there were three destination airports involved.
It's a often good working gamble that you will pick a short period of weather that is within your operational limits.
Commercial pilots don't have "personal limits". It's defined by their airplane and/or companies constraints.
Great edutainment if you're feeling in the mood for that. If you're inpatient you can skip to 14 minutes, before that is just back story.
Maybe I'm just unaware, but it's crazy to me that these planes burn 40 kilograms of jet fuel per minute.
40kg/minute is around 12 gallons (47 liters) of fuel per minute. Meanwhile a 777 burns around 42 gallons (160 liters) per minute. A 747 burns 63 gallons (240 liters) per minute - more than a gallon per second!
https://avherald.com/h?article=52dfe5d7&opt=0
https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/1nzet3a/flight_a_...
Quoted:
Incident: Malta Air B738 at Prestwick, Edinburgh and Manchester on Oct 3rd 2025, landed below minimum fuel By Simon Hradecky, created Sunday, Oct 5th 2025 14:39Z, last updated Friday, Oct 10th 2025 15:02Z
A Malta Air Boeing 737-800 on behalf of Ryanair, registration 9H-QBD performing flight FR-3418 from Pisa (Italy) to Prestwick,SC (UK), was on final approach to Prestwick's runway 20 when the crew went around due to weather. The aircraft entered a hold, then attempted a second approach to runway 20 about 30 minutes after the go around, but again needed to go around. The aircraft again entered a hold, about 10 minutes after entering the hold the crew decided to divert to Edinburgh,SC (UK) where the aircraft joined the final approach to runway 24 about one hour after the first go around but again went around. The aircraft subsequently diverted to Manchester,EN (UK) where the aircraft landed on runway 23R about 110 minutes after the first go around.
On Oct 5th 2025 The Aviation Herald received information that the aircraft landed below minimum fuel with just 220kg fuel (total, 100kg in left and 120 kg in right tank) remaining.
The aircraft returned to service about 13 hours after landing.
On Oct 10th 2025 the AAIB reported the occurrence was rated a serious incident and is being investigated.
A passenger reported after the first go around at Prestwick the crew announced, they would do another attempt to land at Prestwick, then divert to Manchester. Following the second go around the crew however announced they were now diverting to Edinburgh, only after the failed approach to Edinburgh the crew diverted to Manchester.
For reference, passenger airlines immediately declare emergency if their planned flight path would put them under 30 minutes of fuel (at least in the US). Landing with 5 minutes remaining of fuel is very atypical
Fortunately, the flight left with extra fuel, because it was cheaper to carry excess from the origin airport than to buy it at the destination airport, so reserve fuel wasn't needed, but it was close. Also, there was lots of lightning.
SoftTalker•2h ago
cschmatzler•2h ago
SoftTalker•2h ago
ItsBob•2h ago
Either Edinburgh (on the east coast) or Prestwick (on the west coast) are ok (one or the other or both) but in this case neither was suitable so the nearest was Manchester - definitely an edge-case.
I don't know how much fuel they had, or if they could've fitted any more on the plane but it was unusual circumstances.
There was a military plane right behind it with the same issue that night too.
Spare_account•1h ago
doitLP•2h ago
xnorswap•2h ago
They make outrageous claims for publicity, and their customer experience is all about hidden extras and "gotcha" pricing, but I don't think they fuck around when it comes to safety.
They know that with their reputation they would be sunk if they did have a major incident.
intrasight•1h ago
jacquesm•1h ago
jakub_g•1h ago
https://www.eurocockpit.eu/news/mayday-mayday-wins-over-ryan...
> In 2012 and 2013 “Brandpunt Reporter” broadcasted a two episode TV investigation in which Ryanair pilots, speaking anonymously, raised concerns about the airline’s fuel policies and company culture. The pilots revealed that the company may be exerting pressure on them to minimize the amount of fuel they take on board – a practice which limits significantly the fuel costs for the company but could jeopardise safety in certain circumstances. The direct reasons for this broadcast were 3 emergency landings of Ryanair aircraft in Valencia Spain on the 26 July 2012, within a short timeframe due to low fuel levels.
stuartjohnson12•2h ago
dghlsakjg•2h ago
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.
psunavy03•2h ago
bombcar•2h ago
dghlsakjg•1h ago
The EU has shown us that you can safely have far fewer hours.
As a pilot I do think that nothing replaces butt in seat, but I also think that 1500 hours of instructing/aerial surveying/hour building is well into the diminished marginal returns area.
the_mitsuhiko•2h ago
afavour•2h ago
Twirrim•2h ago
bilekas•2h ago
bilekas•1h ago
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.
jakub_g•1h ago
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
bilekas•6m ago
arp242•1h ago
Actually, in a quick check it seems the total fatality count for RyanAir is zero, with only two (on-fatal) major incidents (2008, 2021). That's seems a pretty good track record considering the amount of flights they do.
anonymousDan•1h ago