MAYDAY! Plane makes ‘emergency landing after coming within minutes of running out of fuel

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From the New York Post: A Ryanair flight was forced to make an emergency landing after coming within minutes of running out of fuel in flight.

“Everything was fine until we started our descent,” Alexander Marchi, who was on the ill-fated flight, told the Ayr Advertiser while painting the “dramatic” scene.

The Boeing 737-800 had been flying from Pisa, Italy to Glasgow, Scotland on October 3, when the crew members realized they were nearly out of gas and issued a “fuel mayday.”

This reportedly occurred at the same time that Storm Amy was lashing parts of Scotland with 100mph winds, disrupting the nation’s transit network and prompting cancellation of several flights, rail and ferry services, The Herald reported.

The report explains that flight crew had issued a 7700 squawk code, alerting Air Traffic Control (ATC) that they were in distress.

The pilots tried multiple times to land at Prestwick Airport in Glasgow, but the turbulence from the storm was so bad, they had to give up.  Then they tried landing at Edinburgh Airport, but again the plane was struggling so badly in the wind that they had to give up on that location as well.

Finally, the pilots diverted to Manchester and managed to land the plane there, a full two hours after they first declared the emergency.  When they landed, the plane reportedly only had 80 gallons of fuel remaining — enough for just 5-6 minutes of flight time.

One passenger reportedly told The Daily Mail, “I have never experienced anything like it before. People were praying and my son was crying. I remember thinking, ‘Is this it?’”

Media reports on the incident don’t provide any information on exactly how many passengers were aboard the plane.

According to The Herald, a major probe is now underway on who is responsible for the near catastrophe.

A spokesperson for Ryanair told The Herald: “Ryanair reported this to the relevant authorities on Friday (3 Oct). As this is now subject of an ongoing investigation, which we are cooperating fully with, we are unable to comment.”

Marchi tweeted about the experience, and shared details with the press.

“It’s been an eventful flight so far!” Marchi announced while still in flight last Friday.

Later Marchi explained, “We tried to land twice at Prestwick, the second time we were close to landing pulled up last second. Then we tried Edinburgh, massive gust of wind think captain was in fear of a wind shear. Aborted. Now landed at Manchester.”

READ MORE from the New York Post.

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