Originally Posted by
Herod
Many years ago, a friend was in for the annual assessment. It was noted that he had fewer days sick, but also that he generally took more fuel than most. "Yep; more fuel, less stress. Less stress, fewer days sick" Can't argue with the logic of that.
Similar to a discussion that I heard in an airport hotel at LHR several years back. A discussion about 'minimum fuel' had moved on to personal fitness and 'using up' heartbeats with exercise. One of the captains brought this back to 'minimum fuel' by saying "That is why I carry extra fuel, I want to be going around the hold with a nice slow pulse rate"!!
Originally Posted by
Doors to Automatic
On an A320 carrying an extra 45 mins of fuel would add around 2% to take-off weight. What effect would this have on fuel burn?
Who cares about the relatively small effect on fuel burn on a day like that when the safety of the aeroplane is improved with that extra fuel. Are you one of those 'bean counters' who knows nothing about the real world??
I had a wind-shear go around once -- at my diversion airfield. I was
sooo pleased that my fuel planning that day had been to arrive at my original destination at max landing weight so that in the unlikely event that we could land our weight permitted,
but in the likely event that we were going to divert, on a really windy day we would have a comfortable fuel amount. I was very pleased to be able to make another relaxed approach after that unexpected wind-shear go around (and so were our cabin crew and full load of passengers!). Who cares about the 'extra' fuel burn. That is a tiny cost compared with running out of fuel.
Well done to that crew for arriving safely in Zurich. I hope that their future attitude to fuel planning and the bean-counters 'it is legal' nonsense has altered significantly and that they pass that on to others. Safety comes before any bean-counter misery.