Correct, and there has been long ongoing dialogue between the local council and Ryanair about subsidies. Profitable for RA not only means bums on seats, but subsidies from local councils. It's done it before (Sweden?) where if it hasn't received the subsidies it has demanded, they have closed the route.

Isn't that a good reason to pay by credit card? I forget the precise figure, but if you pay more than 100 quid by barclaycard, won't you get it back from the card company?

I'm still waiting for BMI to refund money for flights lost due to the Volcano many weeks ago! £180 sits in their account, not mine!

To answer the original post;

"Today in the Euro Weekly News paper pg2 they report a Rynair arrived at Alicante but could not land due to excessive winds and so was diverted to Valencia where the aircraft only had enough fuel left to make one more attempt (fortunately successful) at landing before running out of fuel.

Makes you think does not it?"

Actually that's standard practise. The pilot is presented with a flight plan and a fuel figure. It's then up to the Captain to decide wether to take extra fuel or not. Generall on Good weather days little or no extra fuel is carried.

What is Min fuel? Enough to taxi out, Fly the Route, Say to Alicante, Hold for 5 mins, Divert and Land and still have 30 mins left in tanks. The last 30 mins of fuel is called final reserve fuel, if the Captain thinks he will burn into that 30 mins he will declare a emergency, if he knows that we Will land less than 30mins he will declare a mayday.

Fuel is expensive- and it's expensive to carry fuel to carry more than required (higher weight- higher burn).

The Captain can take more fuel if he requires.

This is standard accross the airline industry not just Ryanair, next time you fly BA etc they will be doing the same

It was paid by credit card - it's the only way with Ryanair. The CC company said that a refund will be made available by Ryanair 'in due course' and therefore they declined to refund.

There were cases a few years ago where certain airlines, flying into Heathrow, would declare more fuel emergencies than others. The word was that they did this to get to the front of the queue for landing, which made their punctuality statistics look better.

Maybe for Ryanair and though fuel may be expensive turning a 737-800 into a smoking hole in the ground is likely to cost more than $1 billion and generate quite a bit of bad publicity!

The Ryanair aircraft landed with 910kg of fuel left in the tanks, its difficult to estimate exactly how long the fuel would last without knowing the weight of the aircraft but fuel burn on a 737-800 is typically between 1600-2400kgs per hour, also not all of the fuel in the tanks is usable (you wouldnt want to suck all the crap out of the bottom of the tank) so being generous 20 minutes airborne which is more than 1 missed approach + circuit but less than 2 so one more chance for a sucessful landing but the pilots had already blown two. The pilots screwed up, they should have tanked more fuel.

Dont fly Ryanair, they will continue this sensless penny pinching crap until they destroy an aircraft and kill people.