Ryanair's Steve McNamara made an interesting statement in the Belfast Telegraph.
Ryanair spokesman Stephen McNamara has denied its fuel policy was responsible for the mayday calls.
He said the mayday calls occurred in extraordinary circumstances after more than 70 minutes of extra flight time.
"This was an extremely unusual situation. These aircraft, which had already flown for three hours to get to Madrid, found that Madrid could not let them in, so they diverted to Valencia.
"They already had 70 minutes of extra flying when they realised they had to, as per the regulation, land. They know they have to land with 30 minutes of contingency fuel remaining," Mr McNamara said.
I don't know if the rules have changed but it used to be that you required enough fuel to get to destination, hold for 30 mins, route to alternate and have enough to hold there for 30 mins, then land. If that is still the case and these flights had each had already 70 mins of extra flying (doesn't say if that was in the hold) then does that not indicate that these flights started off with more than the minimum? To me it sounds as though they did have some extra but circumstances meant they ate into that extra and had no choice but to declare Mayday. My question, therefore, is why didn't they divert earlier? Were they getting duff info about the possibility of Madrid clearing?