Ryanairs emergency landing

Paul_the_Painter

I could go into how much fuel airlines have to carry, but to sum up it is a safe but small amount. Anticipated fuel burn may be slightly higher than planned, and the runway at Manchester may have been closed for a short period.

If the Captain is informed that the runway is closed and it is anticipated to open again in 15 min, with 5 planes ahead of him, he may well decide that he would prefer to divert to Leeds, and land straight away. He might well be required to do so by his airlines Ops manual.

You have to remember that airlines carry as little fuel as possible most of the time, as it is heavy. Aircraft are not like your car. A rough rule of thumb is that 10% of any extra fuel you carry is burnt per hour of carrying it. A 737 burns around 2.5 tonnes of fuel per hour holding, so to carry an extra hour of fuel to hold at the destination (over the legal minimun) "just in case" on a 5hr flight fromm Tel Aviv would cost around 1.25 tonnes of fuel, at a cost of around £1000 - so about £10 per passenger.

Now you may well say you would pay that, but 1.) no you wouldn't - you'd buy the cheapest ticket and 2.) the number of times the airline has to end up diverting because of lack of fuel are so few anyway, that the average passenger will never have a "fuel diversion"