Originally Posted by
framer
Thanks FullWings, I’ve never flown long haul but from what I hear the fuel planning is more consequential than the SH stuff I do.
Much of the time, minimum legal fuel at many destinations gives you plenty of options and you have the whole flight to monitor the situation and update the plan. There is also the fact that to arrive with a greater margin than originally planned on a long sector, you have to upload significantly more than that to account for the increased burn to carry it all the way there, which can be a lot on a 15hr sector.
On SH you might get CDG with ORY as the alternate but for some LH destinations the nearest div could be an hour or two away and not somewhere you’d really want to end up, so unless it’s hopeless at destination using the alt fuel and committing is normally the better option. Or an en-route tech stop.