I am constantly amazed by those that are comfortable arriving anywhere with 30min till double flameout . . . . because that in plain language is what we are talking about.
How often in a Simulator has some emergency been given where time has seemingly gone onto fast-forward & whoops, coffee-break time/ end of session as 30 min has just vanished.
Missed approaches with 900-1100kg in the tanks are just a little out of my comfort zone. I seem to remember a few years ago in a Ryanair manual a paragraph stating that no flight would be planned to arrive at destination OR alternate with less than 2000kg remaining, but I guess they removed that particular advice, or no way could you hold till 2000kg & then subsequently plan to arr at alt with a ton or so.
Legal as it may be,personally I get a little uncomfortable being airborne with much less than a ton a side, & have some justifiable doubts over the actual burn that is forecast to alternates, particularly if you are not the only one & will not be declaring an emergncy to have priority. Certainly most diversions I have undertaken have mysteriously used a chunk more than the meagre amount forecast.
Those that routinely take minimum fuel (or anything close to it) on a dodgy day are (IMHO) being somewhat optimistic/unimaginative.
If you imagine a scenario where on a busy night you quite possibly given less than optimum inbound route/early descent, & your subsequent diversion is more than likely accompanied by several others in the same boat, are you going to truly feel comfortable hoofing off to somewhere else that has been calculated at the minimum possible burn, to arr with 30 min holding till silence in a best case scenario ? ? If you are, congrats on your supreme self confidence, & on the confidence you display in both lady luck & the bods/computer responsible for your flight planning programme.
I am not "blessed"(?) with either of these attributes so use the old fashioned method that has kept me out of trouble this last 23 years - EXTRA FUEL.
An awareness of ones own vulnerability used to be seen as an attribute in aviation, the Beanies have not yet brainwashed it out of my generation, although I do occasionaly see contemporaries who delight in calculating all the variables possible to depart with less than block fuel on the log when there is patently no need & a few centimes of benefit. I can only assume they have been lucky enough in their career to have never been exposed to a situation where the value of it is self.evident. . . . or they have had their imagination disconnected.
Whilst I agree in the most basic sense with the stranger that it is not per se dangerous to depart with minimum fuel into forecast poor weather, the extra stress/time constraints you place on yourself /other aircraft/ ATC may lead to circumstances where it will rapidly become so.
For further evidence of this read the report of the Brittania Airways B757 landing accident @ Girona & tell me it would have ended the same way if they had taken an extra 30-45 min in the tanks, me, I somehow doubt it.