The story made the South China Morning Post today and is interesting in it's assetions. It says the China Aviation Administration reported that the 777 had considerably more fuel remaining than the pilots told the controllers - enough for about half an hour's flying. However a fuel state of 5 tonnes, there was not much room for error.
What worries me is that our Ops manual requires us to declare an emergency if the aircraft will land below final reserve fuel which in our case is thirty minutes. If we were put into the same position as the Qatari crew and knew that a go around was going to put us in the position of landing with less than fianl reserve - we would have no option but to do what they did.
I suspect that this is a communication problem. I fly into Shanghai a lot and although outwardly the controllers appear to have a grasp of English, they just appear know the standard phrases and responses. If there is any problem which involves something non-standard, they struggle to comprehend.
In my opinion the actions of the Juneyao crew were indefensible if their reported fule state was accurate. THE scmp reports they have been suspended pending further investigations.