Devils Advocate
WoW
Thanks for that. According to the above posts the Commander only declared a PAN call and not a MAYDAY therefore it may? be safe to assume that the fuel on board was not at or below min reserve, i understand from other websites that the landing Alt airfield was EDI, what many may not be aware is that due to WIP EDI is a NDB/DME only airfield except when weather condition are below NDB/DME minima + a bit?
This is due to WIP in the ILS sensitive area, as a result if the weather is crap then the work in this area is withdrawn and the ILS switched back on.
The weather may well have been CAVOK but due to spacing of landing and takeoff requirement you often end up flying the procedure anyway and this always takes longer than a high speed ILS, in my experence at least another 10 mins at EDI.
Now if the Commander arrives at EDI with close to min fuel and is number 5 to land he has a choice, he can either sit it out and wait his turn and accept that once he goes into MRF then he MUST declare a MAYDAY which will almost certainly cause other aircraft to be either sent around or put in the hold, or he could say look were going be a tight on fuel for number 5 and that means a non standard PAN call, this action might save everyone a lot of hassell
albeit non standard.
Having made a pan call the Emergency services will be out anyway and will in any event follow him/her back to stand, but that doesn't mean the tanks were dry.
At the end of the day it will come down to how much fuelwas remaining at the time of Landing, if it was a above MRF then its no big deal and Kaptin M is spot on he squeezed every last drop of commercialism out of his aircraft, if it was below then he might well have a case to answer.
One final thought on this: If he had landed at destination he would have received no special thanks (from anyone) if he got it wrong then he/she could be out of work (or dead) always look after your own backside first that way its safer for you, your crew, your passenger and your compnay.