Three Ryanair "emergency" landings in Valencia on same day

[sean1982]

I stand by my statement here above.
To me, as a passenger, Ryanair is as safe as any airline, and safer than most - especially those on the brink of financial collapse.

cabin crew don't have any idea about fuel on board let alone pax...
just pick any cabin crew out and ask her if she know how much fuel they loaded or how much fuel the aircraft burned. none will know.

Cnc, you can come and fly with me anyday and I'll tell you the block and the trip fuel for the flight! Don't be ignorant!

[Stij]

Cnc, you can come and fly with me anyday and I'll tell you the block and the trip fuel for the flight! Don't be ignorant!

Sean,

Is it standard procedure for the cabin crew to know? Or just the purser? Or is it because you're interested? I'm under the impression most of your collegaues don't know a lot about the flight...

Cheers,

Stij

[sean1982]

It's not really SOP, but most PU's would be aware, cause we need to know when fueling starts/finishes and also we are there when the fuel figures get passed to the fueler. Colleagues who are not that interested in the technical side of flying they will probably not take notice of these figures (nor should they) but there are actually a LOT of PU's in CRL who have a PPL and are working upwards, so they would definatly know as well I just commented on CNC cause I hate generalisations

[cnc]

It's not really SOP, but most PU's would be aware, cause we need to know when fueling starts/finishes and also we are there when the fuel figures get passed to the fueler. Colleagues who are not that interested in the technical side of flying they will probably not take notice of these figures (nor should they) but there are actually a LOT of PU's in CRL who have a PPL and are working upwards, so they would definatly know as well I just commented on CNC cause I hate generalisations

in all my years at sabena as redcap those actions never passed cabin crew. ground crew will say when fueling is over and the fueler will go directly to the flight crew for figures and signature.
my gf is senior cabin crew and she never get to know the fuel figures either (even at CRL)
just because you feel special doesn't mean we can't generalize

[sean1982]

I don't feel special, I just know as I explained in my post

[airazurxtror]

The full story, according to "Aviation Herald" :
http://avherald.com/h?article=454af355&opt=0

[Passenger]

The full story, according to "Aviation Herald" :
http://avherald.com/h?article=454af355&opt=0

Most remarkable coverage that is by The Aviation Herald, once again. AvHerald now has the details about the remaining fuel from the 3 Ryanair flights. One indeed landed below minimum.

[Conti764]

I have followed this topic and also the other (closed) one.

I can understand 'fans' and personnel of Ryanair getting fed up with criticism on their airline, but imho it is a situation MOL called for himself. If you bully others all the time, they wont leave any opportunity to bully themselves.

Due to the way MOL positions himself in the press, he made Ryanair a love or hate airline for many. You either love the company, or you hate it. The general public will like them for their low fares, while many aviation fans are against the company because it actually stand far away from the aviation industry we all started to admire and, for some, actually love. But flying in general isn't glamorous, let alone adventurous anymore.

For me personally, I flew them once round trip to Madrid. An uneventful flight, more or less on time but not exactly my cup of tea, to be honoust. I'd fly them again for the right (low) fare, but I am actually more in favour of more quiet flights and FR's business model doesn't support that kind of flying since they try to gain as much money as possible inflight, by passing twice trying to sell you (very overpriced) food and beverage, selling some lottery tickets and taxfree goods. In aviation, I am not much of a fan of gimmicks like an adventorous tune and the announcement "Yet another Ryanair flight operated on time..."

But hey, I've got nothing against the company. MOL and the likes seem to have their act together, it's up to the client to decide wether to fly FR or not. I prefer another sort of airlines, but I am not too stuborn to rule them flat out. But peole pro-Ryanair should understand the bias you sometimes find against Ryanair for the big boss himself called it over himself and his airline.

[Bracebrace]

in all my years at sabena as redcap those actions never passed cabin crew. ground crew will say when fueling is over and the fueler will go directly to the flight crew for figures and signature.
my gf is senior cabin crew and she never get to know the fuel figures either (even at CRL)
just because you feel special doesn't mean we can't generalize

In our company this depends on ground crew, fuelling might be finished but not untill we say we agree on what's in the tanks. There might be a slight difference with the indications on the fuelling panel and the cockpit indications, and we need to confirm. Cabin collegues will usually not know how much fuel is ordered, but I've noticed the pursers don't need us to find time of arrival on the progress page and I'm pretty sure if you ask them, they know where they can read the fuel numbers.

Anyway, all the rest is a lot of wind to scare people. Everything went according to the procedures, the rules and regulations were respected and they worked. It's too much to cover all details about alternate choice, flight plan meaning of an alternate, alternate availability during flight going from weather to parking place availability,... but that's the job of the pilot to know what it all means, how rules and regulations protect you and where they leave you in the dark and you have to help yourself.

As far as I understand, the ryanair flights diverted and did not land with less than minimum reserve fuel. That is SAFE. Rules and regulations are not designed to cope with multiple problems at the same time (like another emergency or multiple unavailable airports or...), as happened here. It's a pilots job to cope with these within the "possibilies" rules and regulations give. That's our job. And all three Ryanair flights did a nice job as far as I "can read". I would call it an "interesting day" for the pilots, yes. In cases like these a mayday is not the same as a pilots panic button (at least it shouldn't be). It's a beforehand briefed line of necessary actions because options are running out too much in time and at a certain point time's up and you need absolute priority. The only thing that changes safety-wise is that a go-around option... is not soo much an option anymore. It still is, but then I would start sweating and you might hear a curse .

All this stuff about fuel... as a pilot I like all the fuel I can have, but from an economical and ecological point of view I couldn't stop the idea that we were carrying tons of fuel on a daily basis for absolute nothing. If a company asks you to take minimum fuel, they also accept the risk of more diversions. I would prefer Ryanair where they divert and land with more than minimum fuel. There are companies that prefer to continue to destination whatever what, burning alternate fuel, even if "commited to destination" is legally not an option...Passengers were happy then to land at their scheduled destination, even though regulatory safety measures were broken. Funny he?

[andorra-airport]

@ Conti764 » 22 Aug 2012, 23:07

Well spoken, thank you !

[Homo Aeroportus]

Did you bother to read the previous posts???
I was there, so know hat I am talking about. .

Yes I did, and I wish you'd done it too.
From the beginning of this tread, I was interested in gathering facts. Your dogmatic answer is insufficient to quench my thirst of knowledge.
I don't know where you were and what you know but let me offer another light on this.

YES they held at MAD, .

I have watched FlightRadar 24, confirmed this with PlaneFinder, and I saw RYR2084 (PMI-MAD) aborting the APP at about 5000ft around 20:09z, then meander at 15000ft until 20:21z and by 20:27z was already heading straight to VLC.
Agreed, it seems they could have had better assistance from ATC as a number of other flights were doing the same which can hardly be called holding.

planned alternate ZAZ became unavailable .....

Err, LEZG/ZAZ is closed at 20:00z so it could not have been their ALT. And anyhow, there is not more than +/- 3 minutes to the valid alt VLC, so what does that difference make? 80-100 kg?
So no Kalimero here please.

Yes they were holding at VLC .....

It seems this is incorrect. RYR2084 was heading for VLC at FL280 at 20:45, then at 20:57 were SW of VLC at 13000ft.
At 21:01 turning to 040 at 7000ft and 261kts (Oops), when they got priority and landed at 21:08.
This is one (1) hour after the planned LDG at MAD. What does the ICAO Annex 6 say again?....

.... when a Lan Chile, who was behind, requested priority due to abnormal engine parameters. VLC app decided to hold all arrivals till LAN was on the ground and announced an extra holding of 15-20 mil. Because of this the Ryans decleared emergency ......

Yes, LAN705 was behind RYR2084 but it remained behind, landing at 21:16.

.... BruAir landed before LAN but was minimum fuel as well, ....

BEL3731 landed at 21:30, after RYR9VR (from STN) landed at 21:20 and RYR5389 (NYO) landed at 21:24.


I don't want to start an argument with you FCW.
I just think that by sticking to facts we can learn something and make then educated comments, staying out of the bar conversation and usual bashing that do no good to this forum.
I think we can say that RYR2084 took off from PMI in full knowledge of the poor Wx conditions at destination, for a 1h20 flight (FR timetable), yet was unable to fly to the ALT and hold there for 30 min and had to declare a fuel emergency.



H.A.

[epsilon]

From the Avherald: http://avherald.com/h?article=454af355&opt=0
The Spanish Airport Operator AENA's statement released to press, that only Ryanair aircraft were affected by fuel emergencies, is contradicted by evidence and is false.

On Aug 23rd The Aviation Herald learned a LAN Airlines Airbus A340-300 landed substantially below final fuel reserve.

A LAN Airlines Airbus A340-300, registration CC-CQF performing flight LA-705 from Frankfurt/Main (Germany) to Madrid,SP (Spain), estimated flight time 3:10 hours, was on final approach to Madrid's runway 18L when the crew went around from about 4000 feet MSL at 20:02Z. The aircraft climbed to FL120 and followed delay vectors until 20:22Z (20 minutes) when the crew decided to divert to Valencia. Still on a westerly heading in opposite direction to Valencia the aircraft climbed to FL280 before turning east to Valencia. On descent towards Valencia the crew declared Mayday reporting being low on fuel. The aircraft reached Valencia descending through FL100 at 21:09Z and subsequently lost an engine. The aircraft landed in Valencia at 21:16Z 74 minutes after going around in Madrid with 1300kg/2860lbs of fuel in the left wing tank and 800kg/1760lbs of fuel in the right wing tank remaining substantially below the required minimum final fuel reserve of about 2800kg/6170lbs.

[Flanker]

The Avherald also confirms what I heard from my friends at Ryanair, that those aircraft landed at or above final reserve. Basically, this was a non-event blown out of proportions by the media.

Bravo to the crews for sound judgement.

[epsilon]

The flight from PMI landed below reserves with 1029kg instead of 1104kg in the tanks. So about 28 minutes remaining instead of the required 30. The other flights landed above the reserves.

[Boeing767copilot]

Ryanair files complaint against Spanish pilots union:

http://economia.elpais.com/economia/201 ... 50282.html

[regi]

Ryanair files complaint against Spanish pilots union:

http://economia.elpais.com/economia/201 ... 50282.html

Does he say he will file a complaint or has he really filed a complaint, or has he ordered his lawyers to do so?
We have read so many times about filing complaints , but I am still waiting for the verdict of that Ryanair pilot who declared that his airplane was hi jacked at Liège...

[Boeing767copilot]

In English yet now:


http://www.heraldsun.com.au/travel/news ... 6457234482

[Inquirer]

So one flight indeed landed almost 10% below the minimum legal requirement, if I got it correctly?
As far as I understood it here from professionals like tolipanebeas, it must be 'at least 30 minutes, or more'?Is 'having about 30 minutes of fuel left' also enough now, like O'leary now pretends?
As a passenger, I find it verry worrying to see the CEO of Ryanair publically shave margin off what is an absolute minimum legal safety requirement, so I'd love to get confirmation whether this is indeed company policy at ryanair, or just a failed attempt to play down what now looks to have been a real emergency after all then?

[Passenger]

The Avherald also confirms what I heard from my friends at Ryanair, that those aircraft landed at or above final reserve. Basically, this was a non-event blown out of proportions by the media.

NO, the Aviation Herald did not! At the contrary even: AvHerald wrote that FR2054 landed below minimum: with 1.029 kg remaining, whilst required minimum fuel for that flight was 1.104 kg.

Sorry I have to tell you that "your friend at Ryanair" (probably MOL himself) has misled you.

This is what Aviation Herald wrote about FR2054: A Ryanair Boeing 737-800, registration EI-EKK performing flight FR-2054 from Palma Mallorca,SP to Madrid,SP (Spain), estimated flight time 1:10 hours, was on final approach to Madrid's runway 18R when the crew initiated a go around from about 2700 feet MSL at 20:00Z. The aircraft climbed back to FL150 and received delay vectors until 20:27Z (27 minutes), when the crew determined they could no longer wait and needed to divert to Valencia. The aircraft climbed to FL270 and reached Valencia descending through FL100 south of Valencia at 20:59Z. When the aircraft was vectored through extended centerline to the north the crew declared emergency as landing above final fuel reserve was no longer ensured and received immediate vectors back to the aerodrome, where the aircraft landed at 21:07Z with 1029 kg/ 2266 lbs of fuel remaining below the minimum fuel reserve required of 1104 kg/2432 lbs about 67 minutes after going around in Madrid.

Source:
http://avherald.com/h?article=454af355

[airazurxtror]

OK, I think we now have all understood that one of the three FR planes has landed at Valencia with 75 kg of fuel less than requested, and that the crew and the whole staff and management of Ryanair should be hanged without further ado.
Anything new ?