What I describe is what’s written in the OM(A) of a 550 airplane airline. That should be good enough a reason for you to not be so defensive about it. This is how it’s done where I work now. When GOPS pre-fuel the airplane for us they round up to the nearest 100Kg and add 100Kg on top of that to make sure we never take off with less than take off fuel in case of having used more fuel on the ground as calculated by LIDO (which is not what contingency is for). Simple as that. In most cases we’ll add fuel on top of that anyway.
And of course in reserves we enter the sum of final reserve+alternate. Why would that be different?
For ground operations we have our taxi fuel. This is a figure that varies and it’s calculated by LIDO based on statistics. In some airports it’s a very confortable figure (300Kg out of EIDW) or a bit tight (117Kg in LEVC).
Maybe “using reserve fuel” is an exaggeration but I do remember situations where it could have happened (CTOT expired at the holding point and having to wait there an undefined amount of time).
I’m not being defensive in the slightest, but clearly we have a different understanding of what contingency fuel is and when it can be used. Are you saying that your operator doesn’t allow you to burn contingency fuel on the ground? That’s a complete new one on me as obviously mine does. It’s for unforeseen changes to the plan and can be used at any time after the aircraft has dispatched.
The point I was making is this;
Of your 550 aircraft let’s say 125 of them are not flying at any one time. Of the remaining 425 aircraft let’s say each airframe flies two 2 rotations of 4 sectors per day, so 8 sectors total. On each of those 8 sectors you are loading an extra 100kgs of fuel. So, per airframe, per day you are loading 800kgs of extra (and dare I say unnecessary) fuel. Multiplied by 425 airframes that is 340 tonnes of extra fuel per day, or 124,100,000 tonnes of fuel per year your airline loads for no real reason I can see.
A quick straw poll of mates from a variety of carriers suggests they’ve never heard of this either. Their answer was universally ‘you’d burn the contingency, obviously’.
I’m not here to discuss whether my company policy is better or worse than your company policy. It’s their airplanes. I fly them how they want me to and arguing about that is pointless when things are on the safe side. We’re talking about the largest operator in Europe and third in the world by passenger volume. I’m pretty sure they know what they’re doing.
If company policy is for GOPS to pre-fuel to BLOCK rounded up +100Kg before we tell them our final figure (which it more often than not higher than OFP block) why should I or you question this? When I start flying at my next airline I will follow their OM(A) and the day I start my own airline I will consider other options.
I questioned it not because of your airlines policy, but because you don’t seem to understand what contingency fuel is. What you’re saying now has nothing to do with your original answer. Out of pure curiosity I simply asked you why you loaded an extra 100kgs and rather than say ‘the ground ops people pre-load flight plan fuel + 100kgs on the first flight of the day to prevent fuelling delays to the first rotation’ you said this;
What you’ve shown me in the ops manual is clearly a policy to prevent fuelling delays to the first rotation, something that is very common across many airlines. You then said this;
Unforeseen delays after dispatch is absolutely what contingency fuel is for. I’m not questioning the policy at all, I’m questioning your first answer to my original question
What we’re discussing is not the pre-fueling itself but the reason for the 100Kg on top of the already rounded figure. I assume it’s done to prevent taking off with anything less than planned take off fuel. But who knows. I don’t care why GOPS loads 100Kg on top. It’s not my problem. It’s extra fuel and I will not complain about extra fuel.
This is how it’s done in my current airline. I couldn’t care less what you think. Now other users of the forum know that there’s a least one airline out there, and a very large one, that does things this way.
You are a strange individual with a very weird ego. If I saw the comment of a fellow pilot on here or anywhere else that is different to what I see in my day to day operation I would think “Oh, maybe they do things differently in other airlines”. I wouldn’t answer saying “THAT MAKES NO SENSE, YOU DON’T KNOW ANYTHING!”
In other words. I’m done with you and please stop replying to my posts.
You are making this sound like just because they are loading extra fuel, that they are also burning it. I don’t see it that way. If extra fuel is loaded, then the next refueling will take that into account and load fuel based on what is estimated to already be on the aircraft.
I thought his argument was not that they are burning it, but that they are hauling it. The extra weight of it being a cause for higher fuel consumption.
It is, but <200kg is just insignificant noise in the overall list of variables that affect fuel consumption of real world aircraft and real world engines flying in an environment composed of real world winds.
I’m certainly not arguing a case here, just noting what I interpreted the argument to be about.
The Wikipedia article about a largest European airline has a section regarding fuel “incidents” occurring in 2012. Perhaps it is the outcome of the investigations over said incidents that has led to a change in fueling policy that is unique to that airline.
Again, I’m not arguing anyone’s side here, I’m just a curious bystander who’s been following this discussion.
I try to pop up panels in PMDG.(right Alt and left click)
Problem is they appear in full screen, instead of windowed screens.
Any help please?
Thanks in advance
If you want to have a better understanding about what happened that day you can read the AVHERALD article and the comments. I’m happy to comment about it.
I was back in the day a real 737 and 747Captain. Mt experience with the PMDG NG X series is that it’s pretty good and I can fly it like a real aircraft. Always we have limitations in our control setups and I’m still tuning those. Flying the 747 we were usually given skinny but legal reserves, sometimes I had to point out that Sydney noted to expect 20 minutes of holding. The tightest go around you could fly used about 3500 kg! On our dispatch paperwork we were supplied with a last minute change correction for added fuel or payload to fuel burn expressed as so many KG/1000KG.
There are a few items in this bird that I am still sorting out, but then’s it’s not a real class/ sim instruction program.
Man, Europe seems to dramatically overcomplicate fuel quantity.
I’ve always taught people that it doesn’t matter which “bucket” any amount of fuel is in; that’s a dispatcher concern. All you as the captain care about is how much fuel you’ll have over destination, and is it enough today. If it is, you go… Going back for gas because you’re a tenth of a ton over taxi fuel burn? Huh? Do people really do that?
It’s really not more complicated than in the US. We have our FPL Block and on top of that we load as much as we need no questions asked (unless the company notices you’re loading an extra hour every leg for no reason of course). I don’t understand why it has caused so much stirr to learn that there’s a very large company where ground ops will pre-fuel the airplanes with block rounded up +100 before pilots arrive to ask for a final figure. They want contingencies and extras to be used in flight, not on the ground. That is, they try to avoid us from taking off with less than Takeoff Fuel (even if it’d be legal).
One time flying a 737 from ATL to DFW I actually loaded it to full fuel. There had been a weather ground stop, then that was lifted but there were several serious weather fronts that needed serious weaving and bobbing. The real issue was several en route holds! We had enough on arrival at DFW, but not a lot extra. Recollection was the flight was over 4 hours? Flying the 747 International we often didn’t have a lot extra as dispatch had us wedged between max takeoff, max landing and allowable payload. Clever guys with their computers. My longest flight KHSV-VHHH, 18 hours. By careful management landed with 13 k Kg which was a normal landing fuel. I think we loaded something like 162,000 KG for takeoff. Other issues can complicate things, once had to taxi for 2 1/h hrs at JFK.
For the PMDG 737-900ER it’s interesting to read the flight manual for center tank fuel management on arrival. I guess the longest sim flight I have done in it was KSEA-PHNL.
As in the real world I liked to hand fly the approaches. In the real world it’s good idea to have the auto throttle off if the autopilot is off . Ask Asiana at SFO. Before disconnecting the auto throttle the little blue arcs on the N1 allow one to match the sim throttle to the current auto throttle setting. As a real world technique very minor pitch changes can be made with trust adjustment, finer than you can make with trim or even yoke input.
It is, though some airlines fly manual approaches and landings with the autothrottles engaged so that’s not necessarily wrong… But also not what we were talking about ;). In this sim, a split in your physical hardware throttles can cause the A/T to disconnect if your hardware happens to send a transient spike.
