But, don't you save a "ton" of fuel by flying straight in or downwind / left base, over say a 6 mile ILS intercept?
Yes, but there's no difference in track miles once they've asked us to call visual - it's purely procedural and we're normally established on the localiser at 12-15 miles anyway.
Yep of course, EGNT in ICAO speak!
The eastern end of Hadrian's wall!
Northeast of you 
[?nju??k??sl??p?n?ta?n]
Where is "NCL"?
I had it from a different perspective yesterday. Was waiting behind a DA40 in NCL who was cleared to enter and backtrack, he then told tower "The aircraft behind me is using much more fuel so I can do a long backtrack if he wants to follow us and go first". It was so nice to hear something like that and I was very thankful.
After 28minutes holding for departure the other day at Aberdeen due to a continuous stream of arriving and departing helicopters and jets I was finally cleared to lineup....the Dutch airline who had been holding for around 10 mins was clearly annoyed that they cleared a Mooney ahead of a 737....and stated that he was "running low on fuel"... The controller ignored him....
Did he declare an emergency afterwards?
Top marks to ATC!
I heard a Ryanair ask for the reciprocal runway at Limoges this summer, he was refused because they were "gliding" alongside the main runway. Nice to see local traffic takes presidence, or is it steam giving way to sail!
You are cleared for the option - choose any runway you like - Tower clears you to land
A friend of mine flies 737s for a living. They entered Dutch airspace a while ago very late at night, somewhere near Arnhem. The clearance they received was something along the lines of:
"Proceed direct ARTIP, cleared for the ARTIP 3B transition, cleared for the ILS 18R approach, cleared to land 18R, taxi V, cross the center at W5, proceed D, A then A13 for gate D7, remain this frequency throughout, good night."
That was more than 20 minutes worth of flying, and 10 minutes worth of taxiing. Needless to say it wasn't pretty busy at that time...
