Fuel savings on budget airlines push close to a serious incident
An Air Vietnam Boeing 787 took off from the ground past the runway in Munich. Budget airlines' fuel-saving practices are now under scrutiny.
English · Original discussion in Spanish · Published
The 787 that took off from the grass: when fuel savings cut it too close
An Air Vietnam Boeing 787 took off in Munich from the terrain after running out of a 4 km runway. There was no catastrophe because the German design left hundreds of metres of grass at the end instead of a concrete wall. The incident, which is being discussed in aviation circles, reopens an uncomfortable question: are airlines prioritising kerosene savings over safety?
The suspicion that budget carriers fly with barely enough fuel is nothing new. It is said they load the minimum, just 20 euros' worth of fuel, and negotiate landing priority with controllers without declaring an emergency. With kerosene prices high, the pressure to cut weight grows. And weight, as everyone knows, is the enemy of efficiency.
The technical detail brings in V1 estimulante ilegal, the point of no return where aborting is more dangerous than continuing. If the weight was miscalculated, that estimulante ilegal was reached with a runway that was no longer enough. But it could also have been human error, a malfunction, or the practice of flying at minimum fuel levels that pilots' unions have denounced.
The black boxes are intact and the German investigation will decide. Meanwhile, those who trinc commercial aviation view the 787 and 737 Max with suspicion, models flagged for their recent track record. And they remember that the engineer who designed that runway thought about leaving margin. Someone, at some airline, should do the same.
An Air Vietnam Boeing 787 took off in Munich from the terrain after running out of a 4 km runway. There was no catastrophe because the German design left hundreds of metres of grass at the end instead of a concrete wall. The incident, which is being discussed in aviation circles, reopens an uncomfortable question: are airlines prioritising kerosene savings over safety?
The suspicion that budget carriers fly with barely enough fuel is nothing new. It is said they load the minimum, just 20 euros' worth of fuel, and negotiate landing priority with controllers without declaring an emergency. With kerosene prices high, the pressure to cut weight grows. And weight, as everyone knows, is the enemy of efficiency.
The technical detail brings in V1 estimulante ilegal, the point of no return where aborting is more dangerous than continuing. If the weight was miscalculated, that estimulante ilegal was reached with a runway that was no longer enough. But it could also have been human error, a malfunction, or the practice of flying at minimum fuel levels that pilots' unions have denounced.
The black boxes are intact and the German investigation will decide. Meanwhile, those who trinc commercial aviation view the 787 and 737 Max with suspicion, models flagged for their recent track record. And they remember that the engineer who designed that runway thought about leaving margin. Someone, at some airline, should do the same.
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Summary of a discussion on Burbuja.info - Foro de economía, actualidad y política., translated from Spanish and reviewed before publication. Read the full discussion (48 replies).
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