Originally Posted by
Jump Complete
I was told I was number three for the mayday…
...
I stressed I would never allow myself to get into that situation
If the goal of the simulator was CRM, and show people how they act under stress (see how far you can go before all lights go out), than this could be a way of working (been there, experienced it, although such scenario's for me do cause a bit of "disconnect from reality funny experience mode"). If fuel management was the goal of the training... I don't understand what happened. It's like "unstable, in reality I would go-around but because it's the sim I'm gonna land". No. You go-around.
EASA rules discussed so far in this topic all handled "preflight" calculation as done by dispatch. A preflight calculation done in the office is checked by a PIC who accepts the fuel, or adds fuel as necessary depending on how he sees the situation. Then, from the moment the aircraft is moving under it's own power, all these rules can be forgotten. Diversion minima change, fuel requirements change, everything changes. This is when the job of the PIC really starts. In your ops manuals "inflight fuel management" is normally discussed, even in this EASA document "inflight fuel management" is mentioned. And in this inflight fuel management you will see how important FRF is, even though EASA puts less focus on it in
planning phase.This is what we should do everyday, this exactly is our job. Depending on how much fuel reserve you have from the moment you put the gear up, your acting should change. Yes our job will become more difficult. And it can go as far as all of a sudden having to decide there will be a technical fuel stop because of circumstances that simply happen (wouldn't be the first time this happens on the long haul... we all know how the Chinese work).
In short: if an instructor would throw a "number 3 with the mayday" out of the blue at you, something is completely wrong in either the way you follow-up the flight, how communication and cooperation with ATC happened (remember ATC has to inform you as well about what's ahead), about your status and the status of others handled by ATC... or the instructor did some pretty unrealistic fantasy show. I can give you a scenario where at your TOD into London some nation just bombed all airports around London, you are number 50 with the mayday... what do you do? And the debrief is you should have taken more fuel from the start?