Trip fuel for loadsheet - accepted rule of the air?

[max lenz]

Pilot A:
I like the conservative high trip fuel calculated by the computer in the office. When it comes to enter the trip fuel into the loadsheet computer I want to be conservative too and for this reason whenever I am not payload restricted I enter here the minimum expected trip fuel from experience to protect me against overweight-landings, sometimes up to 400 kg less than calculated on F100.
When payload restricted I am ready to increase the value again together with loadmaster and copilot and now everybody is aware of a landing weight problem from the beginning of the flight.
Pilot B:
It is a legal requirement to enter exactly the trip fuel as calculated by the computer.
The only allowed way to protect you against an overweight-landing of 400 kg above maximum is to reduce the official maximum landing weight by 400 kg.
A or B - or C?

[Icarus]

C - An RLW is only applied when performance is affected (short runway, wet runway etc.)and MEL/CDL items. So C is a no.
A - Unilaterally changing the figures on the loadsheet to refect what you think may happen (whether based on experience or not)is not a good idea either as the figures on the loadsheet and the flight plan must match.
So A is not an option either.

That leaves B without abitrarily changing the MLW.

[max lenz]

Icarus, how can you match expected flight path and later flown actual milage in planning stage?
In your company do you calculate for longest departure and longest arrival and when flying shortest departure and shortes arrival what do you tell pilots to get rid of fuel when landing weight restricted; I heard you could overwrite your actual grossweight in FMS but I guess you have an other solution such as using speed brakes, going to holding or other?

[Icarus]

Max, if all we are talking about here is preventing being overweight at landing,then the answer is very clear.
Do not uplift more payload than you calculate you can carry.
That will be the lowest of:
MZFW-DOW
MTOW-(DOW+TOF)
or
(MLW+BO)-DOW.

[max lenz]

Icarus
please tell me more now how you calculate or "guess" your "BO" considering what has been told above!
Max

[Icarus]

MAX:
Burn off is never guessed, it is calculated.

Going back to the original intended message of the thread;

The paperwork must match up for legal reasons, therefore the flight plan trip fuel must be shown on the loadsheet.
The flight plan fuel is after all, just that, a plan. Once you are in the air anything could happen, however, if everything GOES TO PLAN, then you should land at the weight calculated.

[tcp]

Prior to landing why not check that you have burned enough fuel to be below MLW?

MLW-ZFW at t/o = max fuel on landing.

Just a thought.

[This message has been edited by tcp (edited 15 February 2001).]

[max lenz]

TCP
You´re right, before landing you better check your landing weight to be below maximum.
For me it is a waste of money when on two of three landing weight restricted legs you have to do an approach with speed brakes extended to get rid of fuel.
All this when you knew allready at planning stage you would seldom use the calculated or "legal burn off" because it was calculated to cover the most conservative case - being the longest departure plus the longest arrival.
Max

[PaulDeGearup]

Max,
Check your company Ops MAnual adn you'll probably find that the fuel requirement for any sector will be based on a satndard formula which will include trip fuel, contingency, taxi, altn etc. All of the figures are straightforward including the trip fuel. It has to be based on the flight planned route. You may know that you will get several direct to clearances which will shorten it or that you will arrive from the west on to a westerly r/w rather than an easterly etc but there has to be a baseline you can work from hence trip fuel on the log. You can reduce the trip fuel by using the correction block on the flight plan if you wish but bear in mind you don't have a section on the fuel plan for the standard TMA delay of 20 mins or so.
As for being over the ldg weight because you havetoo much fuel on board, you can always work out the max fuel to load to avoid that by using MLW - MZFW + Burn Off = Max fuel load.

[tcp]

Max. Quite agree. Trouble is that we can never win what ever we do!