I'm chuckling at my "callsign" here as I'm about to post a reply....
Firstly, on fuel situations when holding (or not, or can't)....inbound to OMDB you are either given the STAR arrival, some delay vectors or the hold. I'll focus on the hold. There seems to be some debate about what holding fuel one should have when flying into the UAE. AIC says one thing yet company policy may differ depending on whether you're a local operator or not. I'm not going into that. What I am going to ask is this....Once given an EAT, (which I give regardless of holding time as I think this information is too important to pilots to omit, at what point does one:
a) decide to go to their alternate ;
b) arrive at the situation where you must declare a fuel emergency (given that point (a) was somehow missed);
c) declare PAN PAN or MAYDAY?
The above terms seem to be misinterpreted within the pilot community.
I have worked the DESDI hold for quite some time and all too often pilots, after lets say being given a 45min holding delay, have told me that they can only hold for one more round and must declare a fuel emergency. I just can't fathom why some pilots allow themselves to get into this situation.
I know how frustrating it is when OMDB decide to change the spacing requirements on a whim and throws all EAT's out the window. This is mainly down to individual performance on some crews in OMDB. A clear example the other night was RWY12L, 1 a/c abeam DXB on downwind, 1 a/c 30nm behind in trail, 2 a/c on final spaced 9nm apart (heavy behind medium). No excuses for this diabolical controlling at this stage of the game. It's too busy and I think that if you can't handle the traffic, you need to think about your role in the game! But, we do try and manage the EAT's as best we can at DESDI. Some Supervisors are very pro-active at the ACC and will co-ordinate a better flow of traffic into OMDB with their counterpart at Approach based on where the bulk of the traffic is at any given time.
More simulation is expected to take place soon on the new arrivals manager and hopefully this will help alleviate the situation along with the new OMDB STAR's as long as they are put to good use.