You can never have enough fuel!
Just thought a share with you all a situation that occured on Saturday when flying a local bimble from Welshpool, that illustrates why fuel planning and management is so important, but can so easily be overlooked.
Having uplifted 50 litres of fuel for a planned 1 hour bimble over to the Welsh mountains we took-off and climbed through the vey definable inversion at 3,000ft for what was a particularly enjoyable flight with fantastic vis all the way to the coast.
After 45 mins we headed back to the field for re-join. Welshpool was particularly busy on Saturday and there were three other aircraft in the circuit with a number within 5-10 miles planning to join to land. The downwind join was uneventful, as was the base leg. However when we were positioned as number two on final approach with the landing aircraft some two miles ahead, we noticed the aircraft depart the runway in what appeared to be a ground loop. We abanded the approach and flew a go-around and advised Welshpool Info of the situation. The runway was then declared closed while they attended to the two POB (both of which thankfully were unhurt and able to walk away from the aircraft) and remove the a/c from the runway.
The runway was only closed for around 20-30 minutes and we had in excess of 2 hours endurance left at that stage, with a couple of options (Sleap & Shobdon) alailable to us within 20-30 minutes, so no problems for us to lean the fuel, remain in the local area and wait to be advised when the runway was cleared and open.
However when reflecting on the incident later that evening it did illustrate to me the importance of insuring you have sufficient fuel on-board for both the planned flight and plenty in reserve for the unexpected, particularly on the local bimble!
It's the first time I've arrived at an airfield with the runway closed, so it was a good practical example of what's drilled-in to you during the various stages of your flight training - "make sure you have enough fuel on-board for the flight and the unknown"