Some thoughts

[bellinghman]

It's horrible to hear of the crash at Cork airport this morning.

One question that has been raised is whether the crew were making a third attempt to land at a strongly fog-bound airport because their fuel level was low enough as to give them little other option. The initial Wikipedia report indicates that it had been in the air for about 2 hours at that point. Now, depending on model, the Fairchild Swearingen Metroliner (also according to Wikipedia) may have a range as little as 1,065 km, and a cruising speed of 515 km/h.

That indicates a duration of about two hours.

If so, there might not have been sufficient fuel to divert somewhere with no fog.

I make the distance from Belfast to Cork to be about 350 km, so flight time should be about 40 minutes. Even with departure time (taxiing and waiting for a runway) tacked on, they should have been nowhere near two hours.

Comments

[irishkate.livejournal.com]

Following correct procedure should have left them with enough fuel to make the reserve landing site, in this case Shannon. The pilot should have known how much fuel he had, and if he correctly reported that to ATC they should not have left him up there so long.

My understanding of flight time was just over an hour from Belfast and another 20-30 minutes in holding. Plenty for an emergency/back up landing at Shannon..

But it will be some time before we know what happened and speculation will be rife until the report at least.

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

Indeed so.

(And assuming Shannon was clear, which I don't know yet.)

[irishkate.livejournal.com]

If Shannon wasn't clear they would be able to land at Farrenfore.

RTE puts flight time at 70 minutes from B to C.

So plane should still have been well within operational fuel limits

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

There certainly should be other strips capable of taking a smallish plane like that one. It's not like it's a Concorde getting into Heathrow.

What was making me wonder was that it was supposedly meant to arrive at about 09:00, and yet the crash was reported as 'sometime before 10:15', which implies a time over an hour later. (Though 09:00 is before 10:15, the phrase implies sometime after 10:00.)

At this stage, there's a lot of confusion around, and the figures will straighten out later. It's moot whether that will be before or after we know whether Egypt is due for an early change of President.

[irishkate.livejournal.com]

no kidding.

[irishkate.livejournal.com]

ps- Sad and sorry for the families of those hurt and killed today.

My new/temp job is up at the airport business park. If I didn't have today off I would have been driving into the chaos to get to work at noon.