Call it Ryanairing on empty.
A Ryanair flight was forced to make an emergency landing after coming within minutes of running out of fuel in flight.
“Everything was fine until we started our descent,” Alexander Marchi, who was on the ill-fated flight, told the Ayr Advertiser while painting the “dramatic” scene.
The Boeing 737-800 had been flying from Pisa, Italy to Glasgow, Scotland on October 3, when the crew members realized they were nearly out of gas and issued a “fuel mayday.”
This reportedly occurred at the same time that Storm Amy was lashing parts of Scotland with 100mph winds, disrupting the nation’s transit network and prompting cancellation of several flights, rail and ferry services, The Herald reported.
A Flight Radar X post detailing the flight’s route shows that the crew had issued a 7700 squawk code, a general emergency code that immediately alerts Air Traffic Control (ATC) and other units that said aircraft is in distress.
As result, the pilots made several attempts to land at Prestwick Airport in Glasgow, but to no avail as plane was pummeled by severe turbulence. They then tried to land at Edinburgh Airport, but this was also unsuccessful.
“The second time it was a very bumpy ride and we almost reached the tarmac, but at the last minute we pulled up very sharply,” recalled Marchi. “Everyone was calm until the descent; we were being buffeted around a lot and jumping. There were a few worried people on the second descent as we could feel the plane was struggling.”
That’s when the pilots made the decision to divert to Manchester, touching down safely nearly two hours after their initial landing attempt at Prestwick.
Upon landing, the aircraft reportedly had just 80 gallons of fuel remaining — enough for 5-6 minutes of flight time.
For reference, aviation regulations stipulate that the final reserve fuel — defined as “the absolute minimum fuel that is required for an aircraft to remain airborne safely,” per Simple Flying — cannot dip below 30 minutes of air time.
“We realized how bad things had been after seeing the images after finally landing at Manchester with almost no fuel,” said Marchi. “There was a lot of relief. People were wanting to get off and definitely were not up for flying any time soon.”
A spokesperson for Ryanair told The Herald that the airline has since reported the incident to the “relevant authorities.”
“As this is now subject of an ongoing investigation, which we are cooperating fully with, we are unable to comment,” they said.
Meanwhile, a rep for the Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB), which investigates civil aircraft accidents within the United Kingdom, claimed that they’d “commenced an investigation” into the fiasco and that AAIB Inspectors had “begun making enquiries and gathering evidence.”
What happens in the unlikely event that an aircraft does run out of diesel in mid-air? According to Simple Flying, whenever it’s anticipated that the plane may land at an airport below the final reserve fuel limit, the pilots must declare an emergency by stating “MAYDAY, MAYDAY, MAYDAY FUEL,” upon which the ATC will give the “topmost priority to the aircraft.”
They point out that using “Mayday” for a potential fuel issue is critical, citing an Avianca flight that crashed in 1990 due to fuel exhaustion.
The chalked up the calamity to the flight crew’s “improper fuel management” and “failure to use proper phraseology (mayday fuel) when the aircraft started to get close to the critical fuel,” which meant the ATC didn’t treat them as a top priority until they crashed.
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