Originally Posted by
Bullethead
G'day I,
As an FO I tried to make a logical fuel decision but I was continually over ruled by whoever the captain was so I decided to just order the flight planned fuel, which couldn't be argued as it was company policy, and let the captain make his decision and avoid the drama and some of them were very dramatic.
A tip I was given was to never make any extra fuel decision an even 1000 but to make it a semi random figure in order to make the boss think that you had actually thought about it and calculated a sensible number.
Once I had my command things were much easier and I was never over ruled.
Cheers,
BH.
I can't prove it of course but I have the a suspicion that those who are most 'generous' with their discretionary fuel uplift are also those equally likely to piss it all away by flying faster than prescribed. One moment they add another three hundred kilo's on top of whatever fuel figure you come up with, next it's Mach .80 all the way from Hurghada. Left seat and right seat.
You'll never see them slow down to preserve that precious fuel...
Sometimes I have a feeling that this job is 3% Newton, 97% psychology
