I think the issue with "Lemme's" post, and I am not criticising him for what he has written, but it the professional commercial aviation world it's a pointless exercise.
You are not supposed to in Commercial aviation rely on the fact that you "might" be able to glide in to the runway so you can safe fuel, and extend your endurance.
I believe all this speculation if they could have made it in without fuel, shows that there are many "flight sim" pilots here trying to work out some absurd theories.
Medellin was they final destination, they should have arrived Medellin with "minimum" fuel to an alternate + 30 minutes final reserve. The fact is that they knew already at departure that they did not have this, makes them criminals, and that they did not divert them en-route makes them criminals.
When they started their descent into Medellin, they did NOT have this fuel, at this point when they was aware of this, any PROFESSIONAL pilot would have declared a fuel emergency.
Of course that would have meant they would have had to answer to the Colombian authorities why they left with insufficient fuel, and why they did not divert en-route.
I guess they took a massive gamble, and wanted to avoid a Colombian jail (which they deserved), and instead got the death penalty.
The tragedy is all the innocent people they took with them on their narcissistic final flight.
It's irrelevant if they could have reached the runway from their current position when they ran out of fuel, even speculating about this is just childish.
How do you expect someone who have already committed the most basic errors and ignored the most basic of all regulations, to suddenly have the skill set and mental capacity to glide the aircraft without fuel.
Fact is that he should NEVER have been in that position anyway. This is not a scenario I would expect ever to need to practise, as you should never get yourself into this situation from start anyway.
