Cool, I'm with ya Mulligan.
The company has to assume, by law, that the contingency will by gone by the time you arrive at your destination so
if you have used all the cont enroute.
should be taken out of the conversation/fuel planning etc. You have to assume that it is gone when you arrive.
The policy uses statistical probababilities based on the previous two years fuel data for every leg we do
This is , in my opinion, a mistake. Purely because any extra fuel used over and above the norm is a statistical improbability....thats when you want it, when something statistically improbably happens.
Ie if once every ten years a company aircraft uses an extra 40 mins of fuel after reaching their destination in order to safely complete checklists and deal with an emergency then it is worth having that fuel available. I'm not sayin they stay airborn for 40 mins....but that they use an extra 40 mins of fuel. Big difference. Very interesting situation your company is in. Planning to arrive with 30 mins flying time if everything goes well is asking for trouble, if it's not trouble this year, then next year, or the next or in 2016. It doesn't matter, and every year that passes in between the company (pilots included) will become more and more comfortable with the policy and then a plane load of people will die and everyone will ask "how did this happen?"