This situation sounds a lot less nefarious, but it does also sound like they should have rerouted earlier.
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 weather systems that cause 100mph winds don't tend to be small. And presumably if you have at most one landing attempt remaining you don't want to be taking any more chances.
There's precedent for this kind of situation to generate quite extensive investigations. An incident in 2017 where a flight from the Isle of Man to Belfast was unable to land in a storm, diverted back to the IOM, then landed in unsafe weather conditions because of insufficient fuel to divert again got a 48 page report[0], safety recommendations, and the airline being banned from the UK.
[0]: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a82ede440f0b...
Yeah, as someone who knows next to nothing about airlines, but has seen these type of decisions in businesses, this was the thing that stood out to me. This is all pure speculation of course, but I'd be curious how clear it was that Edinburgh would also have a high risk of being unsuccessful and whether the pilots felt any pressure to try that anyway. E.g. are there consequences for pilots who cause delays for passengers?
I'd imagine heavily depends on how often that happens vs other pilots on same route. Tho I'd imagine consequences are "here is more training".
when you piece it together like that its a close call and maybe a hindsight but its understandable if pilot do this
The decision will have been made based on the forecast weather at Edinburgh prior to the flight (that is used to select a suitable alternate), and the actual reported weather at the time. Both the forecast and actual weather are precisely reported in an aviation weather language ("TAF" and "METAR") and assessed objectively. The investigation will certainly consider if the pilots erred there. Mostly likely the outcome will be that the decision was the correct one given the weather information they had available to them - this is what has been found in similar previous 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.
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.
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.
also worth mentioning that most of the civil aviation regulations and SOPs regarding commercial flights are written in blood.
[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.
Korean Air Flight 801 could have used someone 2nd guessing a pilot. They didn't until they were almost dead and then it was too late. Not 2nd guessing the pilot was a really really bad idea.
ATC doesn’t have the kind of situational awareness or manpower to fix these kinds of problems the vast majority of the time. It only seems like they could have done something after the fact when the disaster has already happened and hindsight activates.
Like the GP said, ATC second guessing pilots is a really, really bad idea. A few incidents doesn’t change that.
...yeah, the second pilot. And in this case, also flight engineer.
IIRC The problem was pretty much aside from errors the cultural issues with pilots, the "lower ranks" wouldn't dare to be assertive to seniority and just voiced the issues they saw without doing anything.
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.
Careful what you wish for. I'd rather people skip the queue by pretending to be low on fuel than people skip the queue by actually being low on fuel.