We Must Land NOW!! The Incredible Story of Singapore Airlines Flight 319

(somber music) - At some point, most of us have all probably been sitting in a terminal building somewhere, looking out at some really horrible weather outside, hoping that it will pass before your flight is due to depart. Flying in bad weather is never fun but when it moves away, flying normally becomes much more enjoyable. But what happens when that stormy weather you're flying through doesn't move away and instead starts following your aircraft, refusing to let the pilots land?

Stay tuned. (rain pattering) In the evening of the 25th of October, 2022 a crew from Singapore Airlines were huddled up in their crew buses, heading into London Heathrow Airport. They were scheduled to operate a 13-hour direct flight towards Singapore Changi Airport and the timing was quite good for them since Singapore is eight hours ahead of the UK, making this a very early start but then they would also be home really nice and early in the afternoon.

When they arrived at the airport, the pilots received a briefing pack from their dispatcher containing the weather, NOTAMs, flight plans and other relevant material and they started looking through it carefully. The weather en route looked okay for the most part. There were no major weather systems that might cause issues but the arrival weather in Singapore looked like it could be affected by some afternoon thunderstorms.

The pilots weren't to worried though since the forecast also said that the storms would only be temporary and the visibility was still expected to be above the landing minima even during the showers. The same was also true for their planned alternates, Paya Lebar Air Base, Kuala Lumpur International and Senai International Airport where storms were also forecasted but they still held up as alternates. Now the weather required for an alternate always needs to be a bit better than the planned weather for the destination and that's to make sure that crews can safely land somewhere even if the weather would turn out to be worse than expected at the destination but thunderstorms are famously hard to predict.

Remember that. Anyway, the pilots knew that their calculated flight plan also had contingency fuel. This is normally either 3% or 5% of the trip fuel depending on historical data and that fuel is there to be used for unexpected deviations during the cruise.

On long flights like this one, that could amount to several tons of extra fuel and on top of that, they also knew that they almost always got shortcuts over European airspace which would also save them quite a bit of fuel. With all of that in mind, the pilots accepted the flight plan fuel of 106,164 kilos without adding any extra and then they proceeded to brief their cabin crew who were getting ready to walk out to the aircraft. The captain of the flight was a 55-year-old with close to 13,400 hours of total flying time.

He had previously been operating on the 747 but he had an impressive 10,075 hours on the 777, meaning that he was very experienced. He had been paired up on this flight together with a 31-year-old first officer with considerably less experience but still over 2,200 hours flown on the 777. Whilst they were walking out to the aircraft, they discussed who was going to be pilot flying and they decided that it was the first officer's turn and the captain would then be pilot monitoring.

The aircraft they had been assigned was a Boeing 777-300ER which stands for extended range with two massive General Electric GE90-115B Turbofan Engines fitted to it. It was a beautiful machine with no technical malfunctions recorded at the time of the flight. The captain verified the tech log and technical status and whilst he performed the walk around, the first officer prepared the aircraft for departure and the cabin crew boarded the 280 passengers who were scheduled for the flight.

Everything ran smoothly so they eventually pushed back more or less on schedule and at time 20:06, the aircraft started rolling down Runway 27 Right in Heathrow for takeoff. The climb out and cruise proceeded normally, around through the European airspace where they indeed received several shortcuts, meaning that as the aircraft started closing in on their destination, they were almost 30 minutes ahead of schedule and with plenty of fuel on board. When they entered into Kuala Lumpur IFR, Singapore approach control informed the pilots that they could expect an ILS approach into Runway 20 Right and this prompted the first officer to start setting up and then brief the captain for the expected arrival and approach procedure.

As part of that briefing, they discussed a fuel situation which at that time looked okay. Like I said, they were planning to land about 30 minutes ahead of schedule which would be around 16:23 local time and with around seven tons of fuel still remaining. Their final reserve fuel was set to 3,024 kilos and they were obviously well above that.

Now here is probably a good time to discuss some rules regarding how much fuel we pilots need to carry especially if something unexpected happens. During the flight, the captain must always make sure that there is enough fuel to continue the flight safely and land with more than the final reserve fuel. This means that the 3,024 kilos of final reserve in this example should never be touched in normal circumstances and must always be protected.

So when we check the flight plan before the flight, we also have to make sure that, at least, the following fuel exists: taxi fuel which is the fuel that we use during taxi in and taxi out; then we need trip fuel which is the amount of fuel that we need to actually fly the aircraft to the destination and then land; contingency fuel, which is what I mentioned before, regarding unforeseen circumstances en route, which is either 3% or 5% of the trip fuel. And on top of that, the pilots can also choose to add any extra fuel that they would like to carry in case of some known delays, for example or thunderstorms or fog. So that's the fuel that we need just to get to the destination but on top of that, we also need what we call alternate fuel which include the fuel needed to execute a missed approach at the destination then a climb, cruise and descent towards the alternate airport followed by an approach and a landing there.

And finally, on top of all of that, we also need the final reserve fuel, which, like I mentioned before, should never be touched in normal circumstances and should be enough to keep the aircraft airborne over the alternate airport at an altitude of 1,500 feet for a minimum of 30 minutes. Now this is the legal minimum that any commercial flight must always carry and as you can see, there is quite a lot of margins built into this calculation. This is why you shouldn't draw your breath when you hear that the pilots are taking minimum fuel because that's actually what we should be taking, providing that we or the company are not expecting any significant disruptions.

Taking more fuel than this will actually only lead to a higher fuel burn, costing money for the airline and more environmental impact. Anyway, in order to understand what's about to happen, you also must understand some phraseology that we use between pilots and air traffic control regarding low fuel events as well as how we pilots think when we manage those type of situations. If an aircraft starts getting close to its destination and suddenly a runway change or something else unexpected happens, well then the pilots will normally be ordered into something known as a holding pattern.

These are race-track-formed patterns, normally constructed around an RNAV waypoint or a navigation aid and they exist to allow the air traffic controllers to slow down the traffic flow and create enough separation between arriving aircraft. The aircraft would be assigned an altitude to maintain as they fly in the hold and if more aircraft comes in after them, well then, they will be assigned in higher altitudes. And as everyone descends in the hold, the aircraft which is lowest in the stack will eventually be vectored for the approach.

Now if an unexpected holding would be issued, the pilots will enter the hold into their flight management computers and since it already knows the alternate fuel, the computer will show how long they can stay in the hold before they must take a decision to either divert to their alternate or commit to the destination. Once we know that time, we will normally ask air traffic control for an expected approach time and based on that, we can decide on what we're going to do. This is pretty straightforward in most situations if, for example, the delay is because of a simple runway change and the weather is good, there's a high likelihood that the aircraft will be able to land at the destination and we can happily start using the alternate fuel to stay in the hold.

That's providing that we see that the wait is not so long that will bring us into close to the final reserve, of course. But if we see that the delay is likely going to be longer than that or that the delay is due to something that can't be forecasted so we don't really know how long it's going to take, well then we have to start preparing for a diversion and let air traffic control know about our intentions as soon as possible so that they can start to coordinate. This is super important and I will show you why after this.

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Now what I haven't mentioned so far is what we pilots have to say to air traffic control in case the fuel situation is starting to deteriorate. So let's say, for example, that we're sitting in the holding and we have received an expected approach time that will cause us to start using our alternate fuel but we still have plenty of margin to our final reserve and everything else looks pretty okay. Well, in that case, we can just happily stay in the holding and await our approach then.

We don't have to let ATC know that we are committing to the destination airport. But let's now say that we start getting vectors for the approach and air traffic control comes in and suddenly tells us that they will have to give us another five minutes of extended vectors before we can land because of maybe some new issue. Now if we look down at our FMC and see that with those extra five minutes of delay, we have reduced our available landing options to only one runway and any further delays would mean that we might need to start using our final reserve fuel.

In that case, we have to announce minimum fuel to air traffic control. Now this is not an emergency call but it's designed to let air traffic control know that any further delay will lead to a fuel emergency. This type of call will not facilitate any priority.

It's really just a courtesy call to increase the controller's situational awareness. Now if we would then get any further delay after this and we can see that this will now cause us to land with less than the final reserve; in the case of this story, less than 3,024 kilos, well then we must call, "Mayday, mayday, mayday, low fuel. " From that point onwards, this flight would then be considered a fullblown emergency flight which means that the flight will get full priority and all available runways, even military ones will open up for their use but I want to really emphasize here that these calls are regulatory requirements and can happen to any aircraft that are being subjected to, for example, diversions or any kind of prolonged delays beyond what they had been planning for.

These calls must be made and whilst being serious, of course, it doesn't mean that the aircraft is about to fall out of the sky or that the pilots or the company have necessarily done anything wrong. Fuel emergencies are probably among the most misunderstood emergencies in the aviation world, especially by the press but now you guys know better. As the aircraft was getting closer to Singapore, they initiated their descent and at time 08:05 when they were descending through 15,000 feet, the controller called them up and told them that they would have to enter a holding over a waypoint called PASPU because of an increasing tailwind on their planned arrival runway, 20 Right.

Aircraft always want to try and take off and land in headwind and in most cases, a stronger tailwind than 10 knots cannot be accepted and because of that, the operational runway might have to be changed. Whenever that happens, all the aircraft who were being vectored in towards landing on that runway will then have to be rerouted to the opposite runway and this can add a lot of time and queue to the waiting aircraft. But the really interesting thing here was the reason for the change of wind.

As the aircraft entered the hold, the captain had a look on his weather radar and he could clearly see significant rain and thunderstorm activity over Singapore Airport and the area was stretching all the way towards the northwest coast. This area of storm cells also seem to cover their planned alternates of Paya Lebar Air Base and Senai International, limiting their options of what to do in case of a diversion. Now as you might remember, they also had Kuala Lumpur as an alternate but that was much further away and would therefore necessitate an almost immediate diversion.

So the captain started looking for other alternates and saw that almost straight to the south of Singapore, another airport called Hang Nadim or Batam Airport looked like it was free of storms and was also really close by. If he nominated that as his alternate instead, he would be able to stay longer in the hold and, hopefully, enable a landing at their planned destination, Singapore, instead. This is exactly the way that we pilots always work, constantly trying to find operationally good solutions to whatever problems that might arise.

The flight completed one full hold over PASPU and were then told that the arriving runway in Singapore had now been changed over to 02 Left. The first officer handed over the controls to the captain so he could set up and rebrief for this new approach and meanwhile, the flight was handed over to the Singapore arrival controller who started giving them radar vectors towards Runway 02 Left. Down on the ground, the weather was now quickly deteriorating with heavy rain and gusty changing winds.

The wind was actually varying 180° in direction as it was blown out from the base of this huge thunderstorm which was sitting above the airport and these wind changes caused two other aircraft to go around whilst flight 319 was getting closer. At time 16:27, the visibility on the runway had reduced to 500 meters in heavy rain and because of the extreme conditions, the airport decided to suspend arrivals until the weather had improved. Flight 319 had now passed the time where they had planned to be on the ground which meant that they were now starting to reduce the fuel below the planned seven tons and closer towards their final reserve.

Now, the final report was not very specific when it came to the exact figures but a boeing 737-300ER will burn approximately 100 to 130 kilos per minute. On top of that, the fuel consumption goes up significantly during a go around so we can start to count down the fuel approximately from this time onwards. At time 16:29 the flight was told that they would get a minimum of five-minute delay whilst the airport evaluated the weather and they were told to enter another holding over a point called SAMKO.

That would mean a holding to at least 16:34 local time and with a fuel burn of around 100 kilos a minute, the fuel would then be down to around 5,900 kilos or so which is still okay. The captain used the time in the hold to take the ATIS information for BATAM airport which indicated a VOR non-precision approach in use for Runway 22 and relatively good weather. But what that report didn't say was that the huge storm cell that was sitting over Singapore was now slowly moving down towards BATAM.

The captain contacted the arrival controller and told told him that they only had fuel for one more hold before they would be down to emergency fuel and would then need to divert towards BATAM. Now emergency fuel is not really an established aviation term but it's likely that he was referring to his alternate fuel there. In any case, it gave air traffic control a clear view of his intention.

If the airport wasn't going to open soon, Singapore Airlines Flight 319 would need to divert. Since the weather was not improving, the Singapore approach controller therefore contacted his colleague in Tanjung Pinang Approach Control and told him that Flight 319 would possibly need to divert and to start coordinating with Batam Airport to see if they could accommodate him. Now this type of coordination forms part of the ATC logic since not all airports are equipped to handle all aircraft types.

And especially during times with complicated weather, several aircraft might be diverting at the same time, filling up the aprons of the alternate airports but what this also meant was that there was no immediate feedback to the pilots regarding the possibility for them to divert to BATAM and meanwhile, the two giant General Electric engines just kept sucking down more fuel. The captain soon asked Singapore approach if they had any updates and they told him that nothing had changed, there was still no aircraft landing there. When he heard this, the captain advised ATC that they actually had enough fuel to complete one more holding.

The time was now 16:36 and one more hold would mean another six minutes approximately. At theend of that hold the fuel would be down to around 5,100 kilos which is only 1,100 kilos away from when the low fuel quantity warning would start to be triggered on the 777. That happens when the fuel goes below 2,000 kilos in each main tank and it would come with some further complications.

When the aircraft again approached SAMKO, completing their second hold, they were instructed to turn right onto a heading of 180°. Both of the pilots saw that this was a vector that would take them away from both Singapore and Batam Airport so the captain questioned it and was told that Batam still had not confirmed that they could accommodate an aircraft as big as the 777 since they normally only handled smaller jets. Now that might sound a bit strange, I know, but there are actually quite a lot of things that an airport needs to consider before agreeing to a diversion like this.

That includes things like availability of steps for the passengers to get off the aircraft, stand sizes but most importantly, firefighting capacity in case something would happen. And remember, Batam was not one of the airports initially filed as an alternate for this flight. When the captain heard that the diversion had not yet been approved, he requested to make a 360° orbit over SAMKO which would effectively just extend the hold for another two minutes and he was likely hoping that this would be enough to maybe still get a clearance to land in Singapore and avoid the diversion both Singapore and Batam Airport were at a similar distance from where they were holding so I kind of understand the captain's reluctance here but as we will soon see, it's sometimes better to take the decision to divert early rather than late, especially in situations with rapidly-changing weather.

After the orbit was completed, nothing had really changed so the captain finally took the decision to divert. They were the fourth aircraft to do so with three other aircraft having already proceeded to their alternates at that point. The controller, again, gave them a radar vector of 180° and explained that they could expect vectors towards a VOR approach for Runway 22 in Batam.

But as the aircraft now started moving away from the hold, the storm had also reached Batam Airport. The rain was now pouring down over the runway with the same type of gusty and varying winds as was still tormenting their original destination airport. But the crew was still blissfully unaware of that and now another peculiar thing happens because the captain who, up until this point, had been pilot monitoring now announced to the first officer that he would take over the controls and continue as pilot flying for the diversion.

Now there is a possibility that Singapore Airlines has a policy of only letting the captain fly diversions or maybe taking controls when the situation is starting to become more stressful but in my experience, it's always better to execute diversions as pilot monitoring when you're a captain. The reason for that is that there are a lot of things that need to be properly managed during a diversion, that's things like monitoring the weather, communicating with air traffic control, cabin crew, passengers and possibly even the company as well as many, many other things. The first officer is always more than capable of flying the aircraft but the full management is supposed to be left to the captain which is much easier to do in the pilot monitoring role.

But like I said that's not what now happened, instead the captain asked the first officer to help him to set up for the coming VOR approach and to find the relevant charts that were needed for it. This included a company-issued airport briefing which highlighted peculiarities with each airport like if an autoland was allowed or not, for example. According to that document, there was nothing stopping an autoland in Batam but only from the ILS, of course, not the VOR approach that these guys were now flying to but it's likely that this detail stuck in the mind of the captain as they continued; so keep that in mind.

Now, curiously, about a minute after they had left the hold and started their diversion, the crew again asked air traffic control if they had started accepting landings in Singapore. This showed a potential bias for reversing their decision but the weather was still terrible so the diversion just continued Instead. At time 16:46, the crew was informed that the decision for their diversion to Batam was still pending but they would still get vectors for the approach in anticipation of their clearance.

The aircraft passed to the south of the airport and then received instructions to turn left onto a heading of 120 and then to 090° for a downwind. Two minutes later, they were were handed over to the next controller who informed them that they were still awaiting clearance to allow them to start the approach. Since the time was now 16:48, a very generous assumption of their fuel state would have them at around 4,500 kilos and that now prompted the first officer to declare minimum fuel.

Any further delay would now mean that they would start using their final 30 minutes of reserve fuel. Now remember that the minimum fuel declaration does not strictly change anything in the eyes of air traffic control. They would still continue to observe regular rules which included the diversion coordination that we discussed earlier.

But two minutes later, the captain took over the radio and declared, "Singapore Airlines, 319, mayday, fuel. " And that finally made the trick. It is likely that the pilots had updated the approach routing at this point and that they could see that from the position that they were now in, the arrival fuel had dropped below 3,000 kilos.

Since this was now an emergency situation, the coordination no longer really mattered and they would immediately be cleared for the approach. The controller told them to turn left onto a heading of 360 degrees and to contact Tanjung Pinang Control for final vectors. The crew did this and at time 16:55, they were given a left turn to establish on the VOR approach for Runway 22 and the controller told them that they had priority for the approach.

The captain was doing both the flying and communication at this point as the officer was setting up the systems and feeding information from the approach chart to the captain. We sadly don't know exactly what kind of conversation was happening between the pilots here because the cockpit voice recorder was sadly later lost but in situations like this, it is absolutely crucial that the crew sticks to areas of responsibility and try to keep the workflows as close to normal as possible. The stress of knowing that the fuel is running low is enough to start making mistakes if you start to rush.

Now I'm not not saying that this is what was happening here. We don't know; but what's about to happen will definitely create a massive amount of stress because we are still far from the end of this story. As the aircraft started its descent down the VOR approach at around time 17:00, the crew were told by the approach controller that the wind had now shifted to 14° tailwind for Runway 22, gusting up to 30 knots.

Now the absolute maximum tailwind that the 777 was certified for was 15 knots and Singapore Airlines didn't approve more than 10. With the wind that was now reported, they could face up to 30 knots straight up their tail and that was way more than what would be considered safe so the crew decided to abandon the approach at around 1,600 feet and instead climbed to 1,800 to try and maneuver for the ILS approach from the opposite direction instead. There were storm cells everywhere so the captain flew slightly to the north of the center line and then proceeded with a wide left turn to try and self maneuver towards the center line for the ILS approach.

Remember this was now a full-blown emergency and the fuel was quickly depleting in the tanks which the captain was probably more than aware of. Now as soon as the low fuel quantity warning was announced, there were now also more procedures that the crew needed to take into account. That included a QRH non-normal checklist which, in essence, said that they would need to land with a maximum flaps 20 instead of 30 and that they needed to avoid rapid braking after landing to avoid uncovering the fuel pumps inside of the tanks.

The reason for the lower flap setting was to enable a flare in case of a dual engine flame out, something that Boeing had learned from an incident with a British Airways 777 which had landed short of the runway in Heathrow back in 2008 after a dual flame-out. This is, by the way, an incident that we have already covered on the channel. The effect of this lower flap setting would be a slightly higher landing speed and with that, a longer landing distance but the runway in Batam was long enough so that wouldn't be a problem.

The turn to the left started when the aircraft was only about six nautical miles away from the airport which is very close if you want to intercept an ILS approach. Like I said before, the captain was likely avoiding weather here and it's possible that he cut the circuit short in order to avoid a larger cell further out on the center line. But there is also possibility that he just wanted to intercept the approach and land as soon as possible because of the fuel state.

He was now planning to use the autoland feature of the autopilot to assure a successful landing but this feature requires the autopilot to be engaged above 600 feet and in a nice and stable approach in order to work and what these two pilots were now flying was pretty far from a standard ILS pattern. The aircraft had, during its wide left turn, passed through the center line and was now descending to try and capture the ILS at an altitude of only about 1,000 feet and inside of two nautical miles from the runway. Now I have, in earlier videos, explained how the ILS system works but in short, there are two antennas situated on the ground next to and beyond the runway who emit two sets of radio signals each.

The localizer antenna sends out guidance for the aircraft to follow in the horizontal plane and the glide slope antenna for the vertical plane. Now when these signals are sent out from the antennas and radiate out outwards, the signals will become wider and wider the further away from the antennas that they get. This will mean that the instruments in the aircraft who interprets these signals will become more and more sensitive the closer the aircraft comes to the antennas.

Because of this, it is really important to intercept the ILS early, normally at least around five nautical miles out in order for the aircraft to align itself so it only needs minimal changes in pitch and roll as it gets closer to the runway. But as I just explained, this aircraft was now trying to intercept the ILS much closer than that and the captain was doing so with both a relatively high intercept angle of around 15° and a vertical speed of 1,300 feet per minute. At time 17:05, the first officer informed the approach controller that they now had the runway in sight through the intense rain.

They were passing an altitude of around 1,200 feet at this point and the captain was still manually positioning the aircraft to try and align it with the center line. The approach controller told the crew to switch over to Batam tower for the landing clearance and this was read back but the switch never happened. Almost at the same time as this call was made, the captain who had previously armed the approach mode saw that the glide slope and localizer had now been captured and this prompted him to re-engage the autopilot for the anticipated autoland but almost immediately, a no-autoland warning appeared on his primary flight display and on top of that, he also saw that the ILS indicator was showing that the aircraft was now flying full scale both to the left and above the center line.

This really confused the captain but it actually makes perfect sense. Since he had attempted to capture the ILS so close to the runway and still with quite large intercept angles, the autopilot simply didn't have time to maneuver the aircraft into a more stabilized position. Instead it continued to descend, trying to correct back but with little to no time to do so.

In the tower, the tower controller was now calling up the approach controller to advise him that he had heard nothing from the inbound emergency aircraft and that no landing clearance had been given. On top of that, he had no visual contact with the traffic because the visibility had now dropped to 500 meters in heavy rain. 20 seconds after the no autoland message had appeared and at an altitude of only 132 feet, the captain decided to go around and press the TO/GA switches.

The two engines now roared into go-around thrust and the aircraft started climbing away from the runway, now using up even more of that precious little fuel that they had left in the tanks. We will never know for sure but normally, a 777 would use somewhere in the region of 1,500 kilos during a normal go-around. This was now the second go-around they had executed but the first one was from a relatively high altitude and likely with lower flap settings and as the aircraft now climbed to 3,000 feet and the time was 17:09, it was 46 minutes after the time that they had planned to land with seven tons.

So an approximate estimate would put the fuel on board to around 2,000 kilos at this point and possibly even less than that. The captain asked the approach controller for an updated wind and visibility estimate for Runway 22 since that runway was now closer to them but since the approach controller had to ask the tower to get this information, it took him about 90 seconds to respond and during that time, the aircraft had made a turn and flown quite far downwind for another ILS approach. The visibility was finally reported as 500 meters for Runway 04 and six kilometers for Runway 22, showing that a heavy shower was now moving over the field but, at least, the wind was steady at 340° at seven knots.

The captain responded to the information and said that from the position they now were, they didn't have enough fuel to reposition for Runway 22. So he would continue for another ILS into Runway 04 even if the visibility was worse but they had to land this time. And for some reason, likely the weather, he had been flying a downwind that took him closer and closer to the center line.

When he started to make the right-hand turn for the final, he was, again, only five and a half nautical miles away from the runway, still at 3,000 feet and with 220 knots of speed. This meant that in order to capture the ILS, he would now have to descend quite fast while configuring the aircraft and also making a right kind of pear-shaped turn. It is very hard to say what the weather radar looked like in the cockpit at this point, it was likely full of very nasty red returns but if we are to learn anything from this situation it is to slow things down and give yourself more time when the perception is that there's less time available.

It is almost certain that if this crew would have been able to extend the downwind on their previous approach to intercept the ILS further out, they would have already been taxiing in by now but instead here they were about to make another really tight circuit. At time 17:11, the approach controller informed the crew that the visibility for Runway 04 had now improved to 800 meters and that they were cleared for the approach at their own discretion. The captain, again with the radios, for some reason, responded that his intention was to continue for Runway 04 as they had previously discussed.

Now like I mentioned earlier, in a high stress environment, the captain should have always try to get as much help as possible from the rest of the crew and that would definitely have included letting the first officer manage the radio but that was not happening here. Meanwhile on the ground, the tower controller had cleared everything away from the runway area in order to make sure that the aircraft could land without any problems this time. The captain asked to configure the aircraft down to flaps 20 and, again, started to try and intercept the final at around two miles but he found himself in an almost identical position again, only this time, he was intercepting from the left.

When the aircraft finally broke through the clouds both pilots saw that they were well above the glide slope and also significantly offset to the left. The captain tried to get the aircraft into the landing slot manually but by doing that, he had to initiate a dive to over 1,400 feet per minute which, at that low altitude, triggered a-- - Sink rate. Sink rate.

- Ground proximity warning. And that led to the unthinkable, a third go-around which happened at time 17:14 from an altitude of only 212 feet. The aircraft now climbed like a rocket with a vertical speed of around 4,300 feet per minute but they quickly leveled off at an altitude of 2,000 feet.

The captain called the approach controller and informed him that the fuel was now critically low and that his plan was to fly straight ahead and then do a visual teardrop procedure to land on Runway 22 since that's all they had fuel left to do and he was probably right about that since the fuel on board would have likely been less than 1,000 kilos at this point. The approach controller informed them that the wind was now 330 degrees at 15 knots, meaning a tailwind of around six knots which the captain gladly accepted. The crew quickly reconfigured the aircraft for the fourth approach and luckily, the bad weather had now moved way further to the south.

At time 17:19, the aircraft finally touched down safely on Runway 22 with the remaining fuel significantly below final reserve. Now we will never know how low that fuel actually got but like I said before using simple and very conservative fuel calculations, shows that it might have been well below 1,000 kilos and that's a landing fuel that makes even me, as a Boeing 737 pilot, break out in a cold sweat. The final report came to the conclusion that the incident happened due to poor weather and the pilot's preference to land at their destination airport rather than diverting earlier.

Interestingly enough, this is the first report I have ever read that gives direct reference to the impact of climate change and the more intense storms it's giving rise to which is also impacting the pilot's decision-making. Singapore Airlines included this incident in their pilot-training programs in several ways and that, together with better briefing material and more emphasis on fuel planning was enough for the investigators to not issue any further recommendations. So what do you guys think?

I'd love to hear your opinions and remember to subscribe to the channel. Have an absolutely fantastic day and I'll see you next time, bye-bye.