boeingbus,
Thanks for that. I am afraid that captjns is a provincial jockey with very little knowledge outside of his own sheltered little world.
I work for a pretty major UK airline. We turn up for work, normally the FO pulls all the paperwork off the PCs, we go throught the Met, NOTAMS etc and then between us make a fuel decision.
That fuel amount is then passed to the dispatcher who will generate the load sheet. He/She has nothing what so ever to do with the preflight planning unlike in the US. Nor do they follow the flight.
I am sure that the difference has been explained loads of times on here before.