Originally Posted by
CVividasku
What do you cover with your approach and what level of risk are you willing to take ?
If you agree to """routinely""" burn into your final reserve, then ok, go ahead.
However, if you consider that final reserve is something that should never be touched, ever, then your reasoning could be different.
You want the fuel runout event to be less likely than 1/1 billion flight hours
Go around is something that happens approximately once in every 100 to 1000 flight hours. So you must have at least 3 go arounds planned for your flight (and up to 4 or even 4.5). For a standard A320, that gives you between 2.1T and 3.1T. 2T is the legal minimum fuel that we usually have given the distance of alternate airfields for major cities in Europe. 3T is 1T extra, which is a reasonable amount of fuel that is usually taken for reasonably bad conditions. This very simple calculation worked out quite well.
Going below this you're not covered for anything more with the right level of safety.
Two go arounds in the same flight (clear skies), or three go arounds in the same flight (bad wheather) is really bad luck and does not happen everyday, but if you aim for a 1/1 billion flight hours level of safety, you absolutely need to cover this case.
I’m not sure I follow your logic. With respect, you seem to be only considering shorthaul in a limited geographic theatre. You seem strike me as wanting to make sensible decisions but you can’t just make up your own fuel policy. You might get away with it at your current operator but when you move to a longhaul operator you have to play their game.
Your post suggests that you are measuring contingency fuel in go-arounds which might be ok for shorthaul Europe ops but it doesn’t work elsewhere. Contingency is fuel for issues from the time you unplug the fuel bowser. It could be used for delays at departure, or weather avoidance(think 200nm deviations when flying ME to AUS) or when flying though China where they descend you from FL400 to FL280 up to 1000nm from your destination. My point is that there are so many more issues than just go-arounds that factor into contingency. My employer has far more data than I do and are better placed to assess an appropriate value of contingency. Obviously I will make the final decision, but I take their inputs very seriously.