I must confess to not being fully 'au fait' with the intricacies of company fuel planning, but it does seem to me that this incident was a little daft.
120.4 says in his last post that they actually landed within 100 kgs of company minimums. I understand that this is what must remain in the tanks at shutdown. It seems that it is also enough to fly a radar circuit. Therefore, to declare that 'we do not have sufficient fuel for a go-around' is incorrect. They should make the approach and then if they have to go around call an emergency and get a priority approach. To tell the controllers that they HAVE to land this time round and get the runway cleared puts unnecessary pressure on all concerned. It is only upon the go around (apparently) that it becomes an emergency situation, not on the first approach. If it is an emergency (because it appears you must declare an emergency if it looks like you will land with less than minima) the first time, ot should be declared as such. What happened here was he got emergency treatment without declaring one. This is a dangerous precedent, as one day someone will be in the same situation, not declare it, and get sent around due a slow vacation or vehicle infringement or whatever. When it all goes quiet before the big bang there will be a lot of questions being asked!
Of course the way round all this is to load enough fuel in the first place! Many is the time I've had a 737 out of the near Med tell me he is short of fuel as he enters UK airspace... How is this permissible?
