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.

[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.