Unseen..apologies for my previous outburst...your q deserved a more intelligent reply. Following is my stab at it:
At flit planning we have a set piece of information: its like performance art in that we all know our lines and what is expected of us. What is not perfectly understood is the range of possibilities at the destination. This of course includes wx, rwy configuration due to unforeseen events while we are enroute, aid serviceability, and random events on aircraft operated by our near-term contemporaries. Add to that the usual smorgasbord of potential unfortunate circumstances from political and geological events and passenger vicissitudes and you end up with a cocktail of unknowns.
How you best manage that is largely informed by your personal biases and experience. As such it is of course subject to constant revision. My personal, and by no means perfect, bias, is to only winnow the fuel down to some level that reflects the risk model to the degree that my imperfect factoid collection and...superstition...allow. I have never yet allowed any commercial factors to influence my thinking...to do so is to call into question your essential decision making ability.
I do not work for anybody in management: i work for the punters down the back.
Here's a simple test: you are flying the last plane home after your carrier declares bankruptcy. To which metrics do you measure your prudence? Why? What has changed? If your answer is simple economics, then you may need to revisit your default position viz fuel.
I once had an interesting philosophical discussion* with K. Ireland about all of this. He volunteered that QF's fuel policies amounted to an annual savings of....exactly our profit. So then: QF exists by virtue of taking less fuel than all of our competition. Is that correctt? And by that, I mean to ask: is that right?
* I had a taser and a hockey mask: It was more pro forma than interesting.
Last edited by Twin Beech; 8th Apr 2013 at 02:29.