Alledged PanPan calls on Friday

[racedo]

Jets forced to send mayday emergencies because they were 'running out of fuel' over London | Mail Online (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2560557/Jets-forced-send-mayday-emergencies-running-fuel-London.html)

Its DM reporting so need to be taken into consideration.

Question is how many really occured ?
Given storm conditions were widely reported then were some airlines not loading maxium fuel ? or Diverting earlier ?

[exeng]

All aircraft landed safely so a bit of a DM non story as usual. As you know in very congested airspace (such as the UK) any weather situation is bound to cause delays and subsequent diverts.

'were some airlines not loading maxium fuel ?'. Without a doubt. Almost all airlines would not be loading maximum fuel.

Reasoned decisions would be made by Flight Crews of the risks on this particular day as on any other day, it is what we do.

We would like to put on Max fuel every day, just in case, but the punters would not approve because of the cost of tickets. On a day where the weather forecast is not good then Flight Crews make a reasoned decision based on their training and experience.

On this day it would seem that those decisions worked well. Also the old established system of pan and mayday calls worked as planned in helping ATC organise priority to aircraft.

[N747EX]

Heard apparently there was upwards of 20 fuel emergencies called. Had a friend flying in the area he said it was pretty busy with heathrow diverting, city shut and Stansted only taking emergencies. Heard Birmingham also closed later in the night. Heard a rumour of a BA airbus running very low diverting from Heathrow but dont know where it ended up could have been this Moscow flight not sure

[chevvron]

The term 'fuel emergency' is not recognised by UK civil ATC.

[Nightstop]

The precise UK broadcasts are:

"MINIMUM FUEL callsign" or

"MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY FUEL callsign" as appropriate

(see CAP 413 8.29-8.31)

[Dave Clarke Fife]

Heard a rumour of a BA airbus running very low diverting from Heathrow but dont know where it ended up could have been this Moscow flight not sure

The Moscow flight that diverted LHR-MAN was a B767 not an Airbus. The Airbus divs into MAN were from Aberdeen, Orly, Rome and I think the last one was a Glasgow