This is worrisome

I'd presume it was also flying into a massive headwind which reduced it's actual speed and ate more fuel than expected. Not sure if weather is factored into fuel calculations, although I would think it would be for situations like this.

Absolutely, fuel reserves are very much accounted for. So are alternate airports, multiple aborted landing attempts, forecast weather, and many other factors which provide crucial safety margins (or are supposed to). If the “six minutes of reserves” as reported is actually true, it suggests that something went very wrong. Yikes.

The pilot had squawked Code 7700 immediately after failing to land at Edinburgh for an emergency priority landing at Manchester, fully aware of the fuel situation.
In the storm Manchester was the closest available airfield, as Newcastle was also socked in.

That day other flights into Scotland were being diverted all over Europe due to the severity of the storm, and Belfast and Dublin were also struggling.

It's difficult to see what else could have been done, except to make a hard and very dangerous landing at Prestwick or Edinburgh.

Funny how the previous week no-one reported the United flight which had an engine issue soon after leaving Heathrow and had to circle the English Lake District in about half a dozen loops dumping fuel before making a full emergency landing back at Heathrow at a remote stand with all emergency services attending, fire trucks doing a high speed follow.

"Funny how the previous week no-one reported the United flight ..."

Not so funny. I have no interest in an emergency situation that happened. The discussion where I saw this, mentioned retired air traffic controllers not flying certain airlines because of their habit of declaring "low fuel" to jump the landing queue. I would expect a low cost airline to fly with the minimum amount of fuel allowed. And I don't know how that is mandated. My concern, that I didn't see worth mentioning, was these kinds of issues.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45539943

That interpretation is disputed here:

https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/38501/is-it-true-that-ryanair-flies-without-fuel-reserves

edit: I am happy to wait on the investigation to sort it out. If there's even anything to sort out.

Yikes! We are flying on Ryanair from Lisbon to Manchester next month. The problem appears to be due to the extenuating circumstances of an unusual storm. Still, I’ll keep my fingers crossed.

This case is certainly interesting, but it just feels like Ryanair bashing, as does much of the commentary in the attached articles, and I'm no fan at all of Ryanair.

t is a good question why Prestwick was even open, given that a much larger and heavier Canadian Air Force tanker also had to abort a landing there at about the same time. I'm not sure where they diverted to, maybe also MAN.
Without many facts we don't have it isn't clear why Glasgow wasn't initially used in place of Prestwick (in very high theory a slightly more sheltered airport, maybe no capacity) but Edinburgh did have other flights successfully landing at the same time as this flight tried to get in. On the basic face of it Edinburgh may have been a reasonable first diversion. However the flights landing were larger heavier aircraft.
Contrary to what is stated in the attached commentary Carlisle was a possible and closer emergency airport. Whether it was within weather limits is not known, and it is an airport most commercial pilots are not trained on. So in (at best) very marginal conditions probably not a good choice unless they had no other option. But much larger passenger aircraft can and have landed at Carlisle, and the passenger terminal building was open. And the airport has not to my knowledge surrendered it's passenger licence (as stated in your article). It is certainly open for military and private use.

As a Mancunian by birth the potential of disaster certainly worries me- I remember vividly the 1967 Stockport disaster - in very different circumstances also a fuel issue. Every few years I visit the site of that disaster. The fact that we could have had another and possibly worse Stockport is deeply troubling.

The UA flight was very worrisome to those in the Lake District watching it circling, and it certainly worries me that an emergency was declared so soon after take off- was that aircraft actually airworthy? What would have happened if it had come down over the Lake District or elsewhere? There has been total silence on what the emergency actually was, which is not helpful. If I was flying UA soon I would be very anxious. Why did it return to London, and not land in the North of England or Scotland once it was light enough?
It was the second American based passenger aircraft that week leaving the UK to declare an emergency.- the other being AA, I believe.

That worries me way more than a plane caught in extreme weather. Frankly I am surprised this even merits a thread on this forum, at least pending a formal report.

As someone who used to have a pilots license, perhaps I can add some info.

For commercial flights, when a flight plan is filed, the plane must have enough fuel to fly to a planned alternate airport that is weather free plus an additional 45 minute reserve.

Every airline flight also has a licensed flight dispatcher at the airline's headquarters or operational base that has helped plan the flight and watches it while in the air. He/she along with the captain will decide if alternates should be used even before an attempt is made at the scheduled airport.

If the Ryanair flight really only had 6 miutes of fuel, someone screwed up and is in trouble. The plane would have been giving the pilot low fuel warnings way before he had only 6 minutes.

As for a plane losing an engine, it's not as bad as people think. An airliner, in fact almost any multi-engine aircraft, can fly safely after losing one engine. This has to be proven before an airliner is certified.

For safety purposes, no pilot is going to continue a flight with just one engine. He will want to land at the nearest possible airport.

However, that doesn't mean the plane can land right away. A fully fueled airliner may be too heavy to land. (The landing gear may not be able to handle the weight and stress of a landing.) So, they have to dump fuel. Except, not all airliners can dump fuel in the air. They have to burn it off. The only way to do that is to keep flying. This is usually done in a set pattern not far from the airport in which they land. Not far for airliners is not the same as most people think of not far. It could be over 100 miles away if not further. They want to keep it a safe distance from the airport as to not affect other arriving and departing planes.

Even if the airliner lost all engines, it's not just going to plummet to the ground. They can glide and the pilot will do his best to find a large enough field to bring it down safely.

Think of the "Capt Sully" flight. He lost both engines just after take off but was able to glide the plane down into an area for a controlled landing. In this case it was the Hudson, but everyone survived and there were no serious injuries.

The higher the plane when the engine is lost, the longer the glide time. From 30,000 feet an airliner should be able to glide about 100 miles.

Every pilot is trained how to do this starting at the most basic license. I remember my flight instructor pulling the power of our plane and asking "where are we going to land?" I'd have to choose a field and set up an approach. When we were a few hundred feet off the ground he'd add back the power and off we would go.