I have to agree with Nigel’s last comment – we, (and especially LHR ATC), are victims of our own success. I’ve read a few comments on this thread where people have said they always carry a bit of “Mike Kilo” fuel to ensure they’ll arrive with enough fuel to hold. (“Mike Kilo” fuel = a tonne or two for Mum and the Kids.)
Your company beancounters won’t – and I’m sure don’t – thank you for this company mindedness. They can’t quantify any tension or stress you might feel as you’re told to maintain the hold when the fuel quantity is slipping inexorably towards minimum divert fuel. All they see is the bottom line – that’s what they’re paid to see – and if you do the sums yourself, you can see where they’re coming from.
If long haul company ‘A’ has five flights a day into Heathrow and every pilot carries a couple of tonnes for ‘M&K’, those five aeroplanes are each going to burn (round figures – it’ll vary for type and sector distance) between 1 and 1.5 tonnes of extra fuel every day of the year. For five flights a day, that becomes upwards of 7 to 8 tonnes a day, which translates into almost 3,000 tonnes a year – just for their operation into one port. Multiply that into the number of ports Big Airlines operates to and the figures become truly staggering.
Let’s halve that figure to be conservative and call it 1,500 tonnes of wasted fuel per annum into one port. (Remember, the accountants couldn’t care a toss whether you, the operator, sat fat, dumb and happy, fat for fuel on your approach into LHR or on the edge of your seat worried witless whether you can make it in on the smell of an oily rag, so that doesn’t come into the argument.)
If we stick with the 1,500 tonnes a year figure, how many diversions can they ‘afford’ to suffer a year before carrying the extra fuel every day becomes economical? Even after they factor in landing and handling charges at the diversion field as well as the disruption to the flight schedule and p-one-ssed off pax, it’s still going to take a considerable number of diversions before they will cost the company more than that 1,500 (or more) tonnes of unnecessarily burnt fuel per annum. (The figures would probably not be all that dissimilar for a short haul operator with 20 or 30 flights a day into LHR. The cost of carrying the extra weight of fuel would be less per flight, but the number of flights would drag the final figure up to something similar to the long haul figure.)
So what’s the point of my writing this? It’s simple. Every time you, the line pilot, bend the rules or allow commercial pressures to become a factor in when you’re going to ‘pull the proverbial pin’ and go to your alternate, you’re skewing the bottom line in favour of the beancounter or ‘unrealistic fuel Nazi’ chief pilot who says you can get away with carrying minimum fuel. If diversions begin to cost more than the extra fuel carried, company policy changes. (Let me stress here that I’m not advocating some half-baked spoiling operation in saying this, because the fact is, in my company at least, the minimum fuel policy works and works well.)
I’ve said it earlier on this thread – unless the forecast dictates otherwise, (and my company is very realistic about this when the weather forecast is bad), I’m a minimum fuel man, ’coz that’s what the owners of my particular train set have asked me to be, and I can see where they’re coming from and understand that they’re there to make a buck, which keeps me in work. But they understand that I don’t bend the rules if I’m delayed for any reason at destination. In my humble opinion, any pilot who does allow himself to be coerced into making fuel decisions that he feels uncomfortable with is painting himself into a corner where at best, he’s putting his licence at risk. At worst, he could be putting his own and his trusting passengers' lives in grave danger.
If there’s anyone out there who believes his company will back him to the hilt should he be prosecuted for bending or breaking a law in being ‘company-minded’ and trying to get in illegally ‘for the company good’, I’ve got a bridge for sale. One owner, nice harbourside position…
Edited for arithmetic and *** typos!
Last edited by Wiley; 13th October 2002 at 13:38.