Originally Posted by
Mcinc93
I’ve seen on several occasions fuel decisions made with pressure (perceived or actual) by commanders which could have very nearly ended up in a dire scenario airborne with little to no options. It was just fortunate the remaining cheese layers didn’t present.
The issue won’t be the average crew reducing extra fuel carriage on the normal fair weather day. It’s when fatigue, lack of professionalism, lack of experience etc line up on that wrong day, with the wrong weather and someone decides to accept a non suitable alternate to save a bit of ££. “It’s only a prob 30 tempo”
Any, no matter how small, pressure to take less additional fuel will eventually result in an incident or worse.
Wx concerns are always a "no-brainer" for the carriage of extra fuel - however I have always felt that the opposite may be the case. By that I mean, take for example LGW, nice wx, 50 movements per hour on a single runway. It doesn't take much of a runway blockage/inspection for the delays to build rapidly with perhaps many aircraft stuck with minimum fuel all perhaps assuming that they will get an easy routing to their (near) alternate.