Originally Posted by
Mach E Avelli
If you don’t have enough fuel to divert, nothing changes, except perhaps whether you call it a Mayday and put the pax in the brace position. I would only be going to that extreme if the runway was so short that an over run was likely. In the case of Wellington and a B767 I rather doubt that.
But if an over run WAS clearly inevitable AND a longer alternate could be safely reached by ignoring the FL200 limitation, I would rather go to the alternate.
The FL200 limitation does not mean that the aircraft will crash if it is exceeded.
You might be right, but might be wrong. For my aircraft Embraer decided that flying above FL200 with flap out was too dangerous because of critical mach and buffet problems. They state multiple times in the AOM (and my airline repeats in SOP) that this limitation is not to be exceeded. The QRH says in all instances that if we have a flap retraction issue that FL200 is our top altitude.