Enough to keep out of trouble!
Seriously, it costs approx ten quid to carry an extra One Tonne of fuel for an hour, so 20min holding approx 600kgs costs around six quid an hour to carry! I think any flight into a busy airport that does not carry that quite frankly needs their head examined.
Yes I can see that Six quid X hundreds of thousands of flights is a lot.
When I see ten very expensive meals go in the bin........
Crews passengering unecessarily.........
Unnecessary Hotac..........
Inefficient rostering...........
I am all for an efficient airline, however I think this fuel thing is out of perspective. There are much better ways of saving money.
However at the end of the year the bean counter can say to the board
'If we can get the pilots to carry less fuel you would have £6 x the number of flights in your coffers'
So they can blame pilots, and in my experience - guess who hate Pilots the most!!
I am not condoning taking silly amounts of fuel, but come on you are in Millions of pounds worth of gear and a lot of Human life, not to mention your peace of mind.
Let's keep this in perspective, if an airfield regularly has 20 min holding without notice and you do not carry that as a matter of course, that is not the sort of airmanship older and wiser pilots than me had the good sense to tell me!
Let's attack the real waste.
[This message has been edited by Yak Hunt (edited 14 May 2001).]