M -
In corporate we can feed 02 to the pax for a couple of hours, stay up and altitude, get the fuel burn.
It's stating the obvious that if you can't feed 150 pax with O2 for the last thousand miles to Hawaii, then you need enough fuel to fly 1000 miles, in say a 737, at 12500 feet, after having flown a couple of hours to the half away point already.
The question was whether an airliner actually had that kind of fuel reserve or not...because given all the stupidity of hiring ab initios pilots, Flex departures, 30000 hour trend monitored engines...it just wouldn't have surprised me if those that planned the trips were just hoping that a depressurization event happened inside of 500 nm of an airport, and that thousand miles in the middle, that one hour window, was just a chance they are willing to take.
No one here has given me the numbers, and I don't expect to get them from pilots who haven't planned a trip in an airliner, as dispatch does that. It a catch 22 to ask an airline pilot how much the fuel burn of a 737 is at 12500 feet, if after 2.5 hours of flying at alt, he has the reserves to continue or get out the life rafts. I honestly don't think most of these guy know.
If they want to prove me wrong, they can supply the numbers for me to verify. I don't see that happening, they will just say that dispatch has ETOPS, call it good, and blindly point the plane East hoping the tapes don't bottom out on the way there.
When you hire guys that are not supposed to ask questions, it's fitting that your not going to get guys that go home and run the numbers and see if they are right.