dublinpilot wrote:
My understanding is that the words “Fuel Emergency” came about firstly in the US, because of a number of airline accidents where the pilots ran out of fuel and were reluctant to declare a Mayday. It was felt that people might be more willing to say “Fuel Emergency” than “Mayday”.
Isn’t it that if you declare minimum fuel you only have to explain yourself IF priority was given (when it wouldn’t have been if you hadn’t declared)?
dublinpilot wrote:
Calling it a “Pan” a “Mayday” or “Fuel Emergency” doesn’t matter too much, we all know what it means.
No, we don’t! (for example “Pan” has next to no meaning in my part of the world). This is why ICAO cleared up this mess and defined two possibilities of reporting a low state of fuel: “Minimum Fuel” and “Mayday”. Those two have defined meanings which every controller will immediately understand without further question asked. Everything else is that wishi-washi-stuff we don’t want to hear any more.
The trouble with a lot of airlines these days (and others who operate like them) is that fuel calcs show minimum block and that is what the crew are expected to take unless they have a very good reason to add more fuel. Carrying spare fuel is expensive, tankering can be profitable but only if the fuel is especcially cheap. I recently had the chance to look at an OFP of a A340, the figure indicated there was that for every extra ton of fuel carried in reserve, trip fuel would go up by 250 kgs. That is considerable.
I remember doing flight plans for an Asian carrier, one of the very top ones many years ago and doing crew briefings for them. In 4 years they NEVER, not ONCE took more than what their prepared OFP told them.
What that amounts to is usually exactly the scenario described in that incident report. You have a trip fuel, you have your route reserve and you have the alternate fuel and finally the Final Reserve, and if you eat into that it’s tea and bisquits with the CAA or the Chief Pilot as the saying goes.
So in fact, you end up at your destination with what is left of your route reserve (which, in all fairness with todays planning systems is usually still quite complete), the alternate fuel and that is what you have to work with. So when you arrive near the destination, your holding time can be either the route reserve and then off to the alternate (if you go to the alternate earlier than that, t&b is a distinct possibility) and then off to the alternate OR comit to land at the destination if you have adequate reason to believe that doing that is the better option.
If you plan based on reclearance of course, even that route reserve will be halfed or less. In such a case, you better be sure you WILL be able to land. And yes, that is still done today, with a lot of widebody airplanes as well as normal airliners.
I’ve seen this situation several times while still with the airlines. First one was a flight into Geneva – Single runway – with turn around fuel from a flight to the Balkans. The planning was just at the legal minimum, we had 10 minutes holding time and fuel to go to Lyon. Arriving at SPR we were informed that the runway had just been closed due to a disabled airplane and we were to hold. Route reserve was gone at that time, and we were told to expect approach clearance in 5-10 minutes. So the crew decided to comit to Geneva and told ATC so. Well, 15 mins later still no sign, so we were almost ready to bogie off VFR to Sion when they finally let us approach. We landed with 800 kgs above FR. Had we gone to Sion, depending on the approach direction, we would have landed AT FR.
Clearly, Jets are much faster and therefore going to alternates requires much less time than in a pistion single, therefore the total endurance needed to stay safe may be less and the options are more. In many times, flying to your alternate in a 150 kt single will mean 45-90 mins additional flying time which needs to be covered. In such planes, this can mean that with the final reserve of 45 minutes, a total possible endurance of 5 hours and 750 NM can shrink to up to two hours less relatively fast. And that is 300 NM less range.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
I recently had the chance to look at an OFP of a A340, the figure indicated there was that for every extra ton of fuel carried in reserve, trip fuel would go up by 250 kgs. That is considerable.
Yes, but this is an extreme case. How much the extra fuel costs in terms of fuel varies a lot between aeroplanes and the type of operation. On a long-range type like your A340 it might well be that combined effects of a slower climb, an initially lower cruising altitude and a higher body angle in cruise add up to such amounts over a 14 hour flight. For short-range operations in a 737 or A320, figures like 35kg per ton of extra fuel per flying hour are quoted. (With our Citations it is even less than that). Taking into account the cost of a diversion and especially the cost and loss of reputation of having to call Mayday from time to time, taking extra fuel is often the cheaper option. And if you need a second aircraft to carry your stranded passengers to their initial destination, it can even be the more environmentally-friendly operation.
what_next wrote:
In poor weather conditions our company always plans with two alternates.
Would you legally in commercial operations not automatically require 2 alternates?
With our small planes, no question, provided you can actually carry the load you need to carry and still take more fuel than required. Quite a few of our SEP’s are extremely short on payload with full tanks.
Other than that, hey, when there is Avgas to be had at cheap prices and I’ve got capacity, full please if you don’t mind :)
My only flight so far where I came close to the airplane’s capacity was a direct Belgrade-Zurich VFR trip on the Mooney, battling headwinds and several climb/descents enroute. We landed at ZRH with about 35 liters remaining but of course could have gone to a lot of places before, so we re-cleared during the past hour or so. We also advised ZRH early and asked if they would accept us, as the flight time was more than 1 hour more than expected and the slot had expired, but they were very helpful indeed.
LFHNflightstudent wrote:
Would you legally in commercial operations not automatically require 2 alternates?
Not normally.
You don’t even need one alternate if certain rules are met, such as the destination must have two independent runways and certain weather minimas are fulfilled. All you need then is 20 minutes additional reserve.
Not sure when you do need two alternates ever legally. What you need to do is to plan for one which fulfills alternate criteria, which well may be one which is not the closest.
LondonMike wrote:
It would be interesting to see what JasonC’s fuel planning looks like with his aircraft being considerably faster than a single piston aircraft.
Here is an example from EGTK to LEBL with LEGE as alternate. Broadly speaking I would never plan to arrive at my destination with less than 600lbs which in this case is covering contingency, alternates and a final reserve.
NPA 2016-06 (A, B and C) introduce the phraseology into the EASA AIr Ops regulation. I pondered long and hard as to whether the concept of final reserve fuel, “MINIMUM FUEL”, and “MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY FUEL” make sense for non-commercial ops in light aircraft, but in the end was convinced by the paradigm that seems to work well for CAT and is understood by ATC.
The difference proposed in Part-NCO (sub-NPA C) compared to the ICAO standard is that the pilot is permitted to set their own level of FRF using a risk-based set of criteria. Recommendations are made in AMC.
JasonC’s and what_next’s Citations don’t get as much discretion in Part-NCC, but we did correct the anomaly that while a Citation operating under Part-CAT uses a FRF of 30 mins, under Part-NCC it must use 45 mins at present!
We landed at ZRH with about 35 liters remaining
And I thought I was tight, landing at LDSP with 45 litres – the lowest I have ever done. But there are normally loads of alternates down the Adriatic.
My next two lowest ones were LGMT-LDZA and the following day LDZA-EGKA which coincidentally both ended with 53 litres.
No way would I even think of doing any of this without a ~ 1% accurate fuel totaliser. I know of one TB20 pilot who did EGKB-LGKR, landing with 23 litres, but without a totaliser so he could have equally ditched some 100nm short.
