Very clever, that, once you think about it. "The on-time airline" running late, stuck in holding pattern, claim you're out of fuel, get landing priority, no more delay. About as classy as the other Ryanair tactics.

I would agree except that it seems to go deeper than that. Pilots are ranked by how little spare fuel they take. If they dare to take too much spare fuel they have to write a memo to management explaining why.

Actually, they were low on fuel, because the company was forcing captains to carry only the company-approved minimum under threat of discipline.

It's not company-approved, it's regulator-approved, which is designed to be sufficient. Airlines have no reason to go above that, except for planning reasons (eg you might want to add some extra fuel to have the option to fly faster on some legs to make up for delays). So I wouldn't expect Ryanair to carry less fuel than other airlines.

The only exception that airlines will sometimes do is to juggle around destination and alternate airports so that they can save some fuel on that (you have to have enough fuel to reach an alternate airport, and then 45 minutes in addition to that).

It may be designed to be sufficient but you still have to declare a fuel emergency if you fall below it so it is not a normal event.

While I don't like Ryanair, this scenario isn't very likely. There will always be lots of paperwork etc. after declaring an emergency, which ultimately could end up with the pilots losing their license if it was discovered that they were repeatedly doing this.

I'm not an airline transport pilot, but in my personal flying, I've declared emergencies twice and asked for priority handling due to minimum fuel concerns once. No paperwork on any of them.

I also spend significant time on aviation/pilot forums, and I've literally never heard of "lots of paperwork" for any emergency that resulted in a safe, no injuries landing. The topic comes up regularly in the "should I have declared an emergency or not?" discussions, the common argument against is "I don't want the paperwork" (a strange trade off against a life-safety question in any case), and the most I've heard as routine followup is a phone call from an inspector.

My experience is exclusively US, so perhaps it's different in other areas of the world.

Maybe there is a difference between parts of the world, but I would be surprised if airlines don't have some kind of routine to follow when an emergency is declared. And I would be even more surprised if airline pilots on Ryanair routinely used emergencies as an excuse without it having any consequences.

The only issue I've ever caused was triggering a TCAS warning for a landing airplane because I was slow on starting a turn. Even though there were VFR conditions and we were at a safe dinstance, the other pilots said they had to report it as a matter of company policy, and my instructor had to make a few phone calls afterwards.

Whoa..

> At least two memorandums were sent to Ryanair pilots detailing the company's concern about what was described as "excess fuel explanations" -- a description of the reasons flight commanders have to give if they take on extra fuel over the recommended minimum fuel load.

Is "because it's only the minimum!" not a valid answer?

If you read the article to the end, they had 90 minutes extra worth of fuel, and landed with 30 minutes left after diverting due to a thunderstorm.

It was a "mayday" because they didn't have enough fuel to return to the original airport they were going to land at and/or to continue waiting in a holding pattern for another hour.

It's not the best analogy as when airplane is low on fuel, dropping a passenger wouldn't make a big difference (I'm assuming).

But think of a a hypothetical situation where low fuel situations somehow were common, unforeseeable and unavoidable. And if dropping a passenger could indeed make a difference between full crash or safe landing. It's a shitty situation, but it makes sense to give somebody a chute and kick them out, instead of letting all die.

Yeah, sure, it's more like throwing out luggage, and some passengers bring huge amounts of luggage.

But critically low memory situations aren't unavoidable. Not overallocating is one very easy solution.

Let's just accept that it is a poor analogy and a sensational title?

yes, but how many people would you have to kick out to make a difference?

Right, so they do it at pretty much the precise time that everyone grabs the seats. They don't somehow get everyone on the plane, take off without everyone in their seats, and THEN kick out passengers.