Fuel economy and pilots reward.
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Slasher
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I'm sure TSIO would agree with my practice of "sticking
an extra tonne" on top of CFP to PEK and PVG before I
even start to examine the NOTAMs and wx. China is on
a completely different planet.
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I'm sure TSIO would agree with my practice of "sticking
an extra tonne" on top of CFP to PEK and PVG before I
even start to examine the NOTAMs and wx. China is on
a completely different planet.
It's fun trying to save fuel between Hong Kong and Beijing where you're given a cruise level 10,000ft below optimum and descent to FL187 300nm out..
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" ......You could always divert if you felt the need."
Diversions normally add flight mileage, with its flight time, landing and handling fees and the time to reposition for the next flight, as well as inconvenience for passengers.
Holding for a rather long time might well be better value.
Press reports suggested that JFK was liable to have delays, because of Industrial Action by the ATC, who might be replaced by the Military. The situation was uncertain, NOTAMs were unclear prior too departure. I left Europe with fuller tanks.
I was given a "1 hour 20 minutes to Hold at Nantucket". PanAM requested a "60 mile Hold" there. So I did too. The weather was fine. I could have gone to Boston or Halifax, if I had wanted. My Passengers had tickets for JFK anyway.
We landed at JFK with 95% of our "Island Holding Requirement" ( for Gan or Bermuda) and, I hope, satisfied passengers.
A Captain may have to act as a Flight Economist, sometimes.
Diversions normally add flight mileage, with its flight time, landing and handling fees and the time to reposition for the next flight, as well as inconvenience for passengers.
Holding for a rather long time might well be better value.
Press reports suggested that JFK was liable to have delays, because of Industrial Action by the ATC, who might be replaced by the Military. The situation was uncertain, NOTAMs were unclear prior too departure. I left Europe with fuller tanks.
I was given a "1 hour 20 minutes to Hold at Nantucket". PanAM requested a "60 mile Hold" there. So I did too. The weather was fine. I could have gone to Boston or Halifax, if I had wanted. My Passengers had tickets for JFK anyway.
We landed at JFK with 95% of our "Island Holding Requirement" ( for Gan or Bermuda) and, I hope, satisfied passengers.
A Captain may have to act as a Flight Economist, sometimes.
Last edited by Jetdriver; 24th Apr 2013 at 17:50.
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Originally Posted by linktrained
Holding for a rather long time might well be better value.
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BOAC
Thank you for your prompt response. Many of the costs of a diversion would remain similar, I think, whether on a one-off or a European short-haul operation, although the distances themselves may be shorter.
( With my previous employer I flew up to a dozen 20 minute international flights per day. My employer before that, had me flying six flights daily on "The Little Lift", taking freight from Berlin through the 10 STATUTE Mile wide corridor to the West.) So I did have some experience of short haul, too !
Thank you for your prompt response. Many of the costs of a diversion would remain similar, I think, whether on a one-off or a European short-haul operation, although the distances themselves may be shorter.
( With my previous employer I flew up to a dozen 20 minute international flights per day. My employer before that, had me flying six flights daily on "The Little Lift", taking freight from Berlin through the 10 STATUTE Mile wide corridor to the West.) So I did have some experience of short haul, too !
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Interesting article in the latest Balpa Log, certainly makes you think:
(not sure if I'm allowed to quote the entire article, if not I'll levae it to the moderators)
There is a lovely cartoon next to the article, detailing a fuel league table pinned on a white board saying "think fuel!" in big red letters.
The pilot standing next to it while looking says: "Ah yes... the think fuel that is the extra half a ton we need to give me time to think!"
(not sure if I'm allowed to quote the entire article, if not I'll levae it to the moderators)
BALPA The Log- Spring 2013- sideways look
The fuel fudge factor.
Over 20 years ago in a very Big Airline it was decided to improve the on-time departure statistics and encourage people to take it more seriously. A very clever man asked a very precise question. How much does it cost to delay the Narita flight by one hour? The answer was £60,000 as it involved missing the night jet ban, delaying till the morning, re-crewing and putting all the passengers at Heathrow and Narita in a hotel. He then divided the £60,000 by 60 to get the cost per minute and somewhere in the subsequent ‘spin’ the word Narita was dropped and it was decided that one minute’s delay to a jumbo was costing £1,000. Sometime later even the reference to a 747 was dropped. I’m sure you can see the error.
Sometime before that someone else had calculated that putting an extra
20 tonnes of fuel on a transatlantic aeroplane meant that it could not make as high a level for the Atlantic crossing and under these circumstances it could burn ‘...up to 4 per cent of the extra fuel per hour of cruise’. By quoting this often enough and forgetting some of the conditions it is now applied to an extra 300 kilos of fuel on an A319 going to Amsterdam at FL230.
This, of course, makes no sense at all: if you cast your mind back to your
principles of flight studies you will remember that at low indicated airspeed (high altitude, near the performance limit) induced drag is dominant; at low to medium levels (high IAS) form drag is dominant. Form drag does not change with weight. In any case on short-haul flights a far greater percentage of the flight is spent at inefficient speeds (even 250 knots IAS is considerably above the most efficient speed for most short-haul aeroplanes).
Increased burn
The extra fuel that the navlog requires if there is an increase in weight is often quoted as proof of the increased burn. You should remember that this increase is just a fudge factor to get the aeroplane away without a recalculation. If you ask for the recalculation you will see the real (very small) increase, if there is any increase at all.
You may ask why any pilot, even a manager, would want to prove that extra fuel costs a lot to carry. The answer is, of course, that every few years, pressure is put on managers to ‘reduce costs’. The board believes it is in charge and therefore it doesn’t have to bear the pain itself. The senior managers reduce a few of their numbers and also the number of secretaries (the managers who leave become consultants with, if anything, more pay, the secretaries are replaced at the next management reshuffle or change of office building).
The marketing section gets rid of two colour photocopiers and a cold drinks machine (again, later replaced) and the IT section says it has made many cost savings, but no-one else understands IT enough to realise it hasn’t actually done anything.
Engineering suffers most with a reduction of spares on the shelf, reduced numbers of licensed engineers and stopping what little training it was doing. The rapid increase in sick aeroplanes needing spares or engineers when the upturn comes is corrected by reversing the above, admittedly after the problem has led to a large number of cancelled flights. By this time the engineering manager who was in charge of the cuts (and is an engineer first and doesn’t really understand the management game) has either retired or been sacked. Operations spends a lot of money on a new flight planning system that attempts to prove that the same aeroplanes flying the same routes will burn less fuel, and also on a rostering system that either fails completely or makes the pilots so tired that they leave in droves at the next upturn in business when other companies are recruiting.
Apparent improvement
This leaves pilot management with a problem. Since the Wright brothers aeroplanes have been operated as efficiently as possible, if only because they don’t really work at all unless you do so. Almost everything that could be done has been done decades ago and unlike most other sections, the pilots cannot have a reshuffle or a new building to cover up the backsliding between recessions that happens everywhere else. As Robert Ayling discovered, you can’t reduce numbers to use only 1.98 pilots per aeroplane, there has to be two.
All they can do is try to find some things that might produce an apparent improvement in costs. The first one is to look at the excess fuel saving
and conveniently forget about some (most) of the conditions that originally applied (if indeed they ever knew them). If you can establish to your own satisfaction (and senior management and the board) that there is a saving
in fuel per extra kilo carried (whether there is really a saving or not), then the computer can calculate the huge (but mythical) savings across the fleet. ‘Many a mickle makes a muckle.’
Every 100 kilos less extra fuel that is loaded is now, on paper, a saving of four kilos per hour (note how ‘per hour of cruise’ has disappeared) for flight operations, or more correctly for flight operations management. It is also three minutes less holding fuel, but in flying, as we know, nothing unexpected ever happens.
Similar disingenuous statements are made about most of the other fuel- saving measures which either don’t work, or create some increased risk
of distraction. To mention them all here would sound like a rant, but at least one aircraft recently has found itself crossing a runway in a ‘no engine’ taxi situation whilst trying to start a second engine. An interesting bit of number crunching is that in the airline concerned the amount of money saved by single-engine taxi per year is almost the same as the CEO’s reported issue of free shares.
And the clever man in the first paragraph? He also fudged the way delays were recorded and took the credit for saving £1,000 for every one of the many minutes less delays that were recorded. I don’t know what his bonus was, but...
The fuel fudge factor.
Over 20 years ago in a very Big Airline it was decided to improve the on-time departure statistics and encourage people to take it more seriously. A very clever man asked a very precise question. How much does it cost to delay the Narita flight by one hour? The answer was £60,000 as it involved missing the night jet ban, delaying till the morning, re-crewing and putting all the passengers at Heathrow and Narita in a hotel. He then divided the £60,000 by 60 to get the cost per minute and somewhere in the subsequent ‘spin’ the word Narita was dropped and it was decided that one minute’s delay to a jumbo was costing £1,000. Sometime later even the reference to a 747 was dropped. I’m sure you can see the error.
Sometime before that someone else had calculated that putting an extra
20 tonnes of fuel on a transatlantic aeroplane meant that it could not make as high a level for the Atlantic crossing and under these circumstances it could burn ‘...up to 4 per cent of the extra fuel per hour of cruise’. By quoting this often enough and forgetting some of the conditions it is now applied to an extra 300 kilos of fuel on an A319 going to Amsterdam at FL230.
This, of course, makes no sense at all: if you cast your mind back to your
principles of flight studies you will remember that at low indicated airspeed (high altitude, near the performance limit) induced drag is dominant; at low to medium levels (high IAS) form drag is dominant. Form drag does not change with weight. In any case on short-haul flights a far greater percentage of the flight is spent at inefficient speeds (even 250 knots IAS is considerably above the most efficient speed for most short-haul aeroplanes).
Increased burn
The extra fuel that the navlog requires if there is an increase in weight is often quoted as proof of the increased burn. You should remember that this increase is just a fudge factor to get the aeroplane away without a recalculation. If you ask for the recalculation you will see the real (very small) increase, if there is any increase at all.
You may ask why any pilot, even a manager, would want to prove that extra fuel costs a lot to carry. The answer is, of course, that every few years, pressure is put on managers to ‘reduce costs’. The board believes it is in charge and therefore it doesn’t have to bear the pain itself. The senior managers reduce a few of their numbers and also the number of secretaries (the managers who leave become consultants with, if anything, more pay, the secretaries are replaced at the next management reshuffle or change of office building).
The marketing section gets rid of two colour photocopiers and a cold drinks machine (again, later replaced) and the IT section says it has made many cost savings, but no-one else understands IT enough to realise it hasn’t actually done anything.
Engineering suffers most with a reduction of spares on the shelf, reduced numbers of licensed engineers and stopping what little training it was doing. The rapid increase in sick aeroplanes needing spares or engineers when the upturn comes is corrected by reversing the above, admittedly after the problem has led to a large number of cancelled flights. By this time the engineering manager who was in charge of the cuts (and is an engineer first and doesn’t really understand the management game) has either retired or been sacked. Operations spends a lot of money on a new flight planning system that attempts to prove that the same aeroplanes flying the same routes will burn less fuel, and also on a rostering system that either fails completely or makes the pilots so tired that they leave in droves at the next upturn in business when other companies are recruiting.
Apparent improvement
This leaves pilot management with a problem. Since the Wright brothers aeroplanes have been operated as efficiently as possible, if only because they don’t really work at all unless you do so. Almost everything that could be done has been done decades ago and unlike most other sections, the pilots cannot have a reshuffle or a new building to cover up the backsliding between recessions that happens everywhere else. As Robert Ayling discovered, you can’t reduce numbers to use only 1.98 pilots per aeroplane, there has to be two.
All they can do is try to find some things that might produce an apparent improvement in costs. The first one is to look at the excess fuel saving
and conveniently forget about some (most) of the conditions that originally applied (if indeed they ever knew them). If you can establish to your own satisfaction (and senior management and the board) that there is a saving
in fuel per extra kilo carried (whether there is really a saving or not), then the computer can calculate the huge (but mythical) savings across the fleet. ‘Many a mickle makes a muckle.’
Every 100 kilos less extra fuel that is loaded is now, on paper, a saving of four kilos per hour (note how ‘per hour of cruise’ has disappeared) for flight operations, or more correctly for flight operations management. It is also three minutes less holding fuel, but in flying, as we know, nothing unexpected ever happens.
Similar disingenuous statements are made about most of the other fuel- saving measures which either don’t work, or create some increased risk
of distraction. To mention them all here would sound like a rant, but at least one aircraft recently has found itself crossing a runway in a ‘no engine’ taxi situation whilst trying to start a second engine. An interesting bit of number crunching is that in the airline concerned the amount of money saved by single-engine taxi per year is almost the same as the CEO’s reported issue of free shares.
And the clever man in the first paragraph? He also fudged the way delays were recorded and took the credit for saving £1,000 for every one of the many minutes less delays that were recorded. I don’t know what his bonus was, but...
The pilot standing next to it while looking says: "Ah yes... the think fuel that is the extra half a ton we need to give me time to think!"
Last edited by 737Jock; 24th Apr 2013 at 19:34.
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Airline pilots are hired based on their ability to socialy conform and take orders. This belies a certain maleable morality based on group think adhearance to company policy. This week, CRM is good, they all fight for it, next week it's bad, and they are frothing at the mouth about how it's horrible.
Asking airline pilots who have never historically accomplished ten minutes of performance and flight planning in their lives, as they are given their 'package' prior to a flight, is not only ill concieved but risky, as stretching fuel is an advanced performance strategy, where risk is weighed, options considered..skill sets that were not hired from the get go, as 'captains' aren't hired intially but followers, who will take orders and 'comply'.
So the airlines culling for non-thinkers, then asking them to start thinking, adding in financial incentive to the very people that lack the morality and discipline to not sell, being the sort that have done that most of their career, not speaking up to drunk captains, maintainance issues, is so problematic it's almost beyond discussion.
Asking airline pilots who have never historically accomplished ten minutes of performance and flight planning in their lives, as they are given their 'package' prior to a flight, is not only ill concieved but risky, as stretching fuel is an advanced performance strategy, where risk is weighed, options considered..skill sets that were not hired from the get go, as 'captains' aren't hired intially but followers, who will take orders and 'comply'.
So the airlines culling for non-thinkers, then asking them to start thinking, adding in financial incentive to the very people that lack the morality and discipline to not sell, being the sort that have done that most of their career, not speaking up to drunk captains, maintainance issues, is so problematic it's almost beyond discussion.
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I think it is better to let the Captain decide how much fuel he wants to upload.
Last edited by Natstrackalpha; 29th Apr 2013 at 21:26.
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We landed at JFK with 95% of our "Island Holding Requirement
95% of island holding = would that be 3.8 hours by any chance?
Last edited by Natstrackalpha; 29th Apr 2013 at 21:37.
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On our Britannias the Island Holding requirement was 4052 kgs which was sufficient for two hours holding. After landing and taxing to our unloading stand we had 3900 kgs. Out of interest, I got my Flight Engineer to give me the figure, so if some one wished to know after 45 years.... !
To reduce the amount of conversation/chatter which could interrupt, when the replacement ATC might be saying something, my F/E was used as my Auto Throttle. Instead of me verbally requesting an increase or decrease of power, I would indicate to him that
1. We should maintain a certain speed (180 kts ?) with the A/P in height lock.
2. Or descend at (500 ft/min ? ) with the A/P in speed lock.
I pointed at the appropriate instrument, ASI or R/C, which he could see.
It worked quite well.
Perhaps something like this is called CRM, now !
On some longer flights to the UK, where Met. forecasts might not have been available or useful, because my flight was too long (15 or 16 hours since my Met Briefing), I used to put Island Holding as my Alternate on my ATC Flight Plan.
Thank you for asking.
LT
On our Britannias the Island Holding requirement was 4052 kgs which was sufficient for two hours holding. After landing and taxing to our unloading stand we had 3900 kgs. Out of interest, I got my Flight Engineer to give me the figure, so if some one wished to know after 45 years.... !
To reduce the amount of conversation/chatter which could interrupt, when the replacement ATC might be saying something, my F/E was used as my Auto Throttle. Instead of me verbally requesting an increase or decrease of power, I would indicate to him that
1. We should maintain a certain speed (180 kts ?) with the A/P in height lock.
2. Or descend at (500 ft/min ? ) with the A/P in speed lock.
I pointed at the appropriate instrument, ASI or R/C, which he could see.
It worked quite well.
Perhaps something like this is called CRM, now !
On some longer flights to the UK, where Met. forecasts might not have been available or useful, because my flight was too long (15 or 16 hours since my Met Briefing), I used to put Island Holding as my Alternate on my ATC Flight Plan.
Thank you for asking.
LT
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Thanks, we did island holding in class once for the ATPL.
I thought it was four hours then but flying an example a/c like the 74 or something.
You are right about the Met of course, nowadays with digital this and that you can get an accurate TAF, as they are using all the kit and even the TAFs and winds aloft are fairly accurate, most times. you can flick a screen and get the jetstreams anywhere in the world and work out your own Wx. Therefore they try to pinch on the fuel - due to the predictability of the wx. Although considered a bit like "theft" we try to upload as much as we can get away with in reason. Hence all the recent posts on the fuel issue thing. Talk about closing the gate after the cow has gone, they should have stuck to steam trains.
Here is a link, where I get all my jetstream info from - it is comforting to know one`s source. Here you go: if it does not work you have to drag it or simply write it in - I am glad I am flying something old fashioned like an Airbus. Oh, its all right, its turned blue - it must be in Managed mode!
When it comes up, just click on the part of the world where you want to fly and you can work out your groundspeed and see how much it will/not bounce you around.
AWC - High Level SIGWX Charts
Nice talking to you and it is an honour.
I thought it was four hours then but flying an example a/c like the 74 or something.
You are right about the Met of course, nowadays with digital this and that you can get an accurate TAF, as they are using all the kit and even the TAFs and winds aloft are fairly accurate, most times. you can flick a screen and get the jetstreams anywhere in the world and work out your own Wx. Therefore they try to pinch on the fuel - due to the predictability of the wx. Although considered a bit like "theft" we try to upload as much as we can get away with in reason. Hence all the recent posts on the fuel issue thing. Talk about closing the gate after the cow has gone, they should have stuck to steam trains.
Here is a link, where I get all my jetstream info from - it is comforting to know one`s source. Here you go: if it does not work you have to drag it or simply write it in - I am glad I am flying something old fashioned like an Airbus. Oh, its all right, its turned blue - it must be in Managed mode!
When it comes up, just click on the part of the world where you want to fly and you can work out your groundspeed and see how much it will/not bounce you around.
AWC - High Level SIGWX Charts
Nice talking to you and it is an honour.
Last edited by Natstrackalpha; 30th Apr 2013 at 00:49.
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@ de facto
And please enlighten us on how often have you actually had to use this extra fuel..
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It's not all about paying a decent sallary for experient pilots. For example : the company wich this topic was opened is in south america. The sallary is not the worst at all, but if you're not happy with the airline policies, working conditions and the worst of all in this country : the schedule, you're not gonna be so efficient as you could if you were happy.
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NTA
"And please enlighten us on how often have you actually had to use this extra fuel"
- very rarely, I suspect. In your example, we have things called diversion airfields (quite a few around LHR), the option to 'commit' to LHR weather permitting, and the option to actually lift more fuel at departure when - judging by your 'trip' ending in a "Lamburne 3Alpha" - it certainly looked an intelligent sensible thing to do, plus of course the last resort ability to declare a fuel emergency when all the best laid plans etc etc. and I assume that sort of trip was not an every day occurrence? (I think I forgot a tech stop.......). Your 'sample' trip certainly appeared to have an amazing number of unforecast events - or did the crew just not notice the forecasts?
What de facto is asking is why carry all that extra fuel every trip and not use intellect and load it when you need it?
Captains, of course, can rightly load whatever they wish at any time. If they consistently 'over-do' it for no reason, someone will (rightly) notice. That's all.
"And please enlighten us on how often have you actually had to use this extra fuel"
- very rarely, I suspect. In your example, we have things called diversion airfields (quite a few around LHR), the option to 'commit' to LHR weather permitting, and the option to actually lift more fuel at departure when - judging by your 'trip' ending in a "Lamburne 3Alpha" - it certainly looked an intelligent sensible thing to do, plus of course the last resort ability to declare a fuel emergency when all the best laid plans etc etc. and I assume that sort of trip was not an every day occurrence? (I think I forgot a tech stop.......). Your 'sample' trip certainly appeared to have an amazing number of unforecast events - or did the crew just not notice the forecasts?
What de facto is asking is why carry all that extra fuel every trip and not use intellect and load it when you need it?
Captains, of course, can rightly load whatever they wish at any time. If they consistently 'over-do' it for no reason, someone will (rightly) notice. That's all.
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BOAC Thank you so much. We do get the forecast. always and everytime.
Life would be interesting if that were not to happen, for many reasons.
We also fuel to boot. I am with Slasher on his fuel attitude - on this one, despite the fact I don`t like him at all this week.
Life would be interesting if that were not to happen, for many reasons.
We also fuel to boot. I am with Slasher on his fuel attitude - on this one, despite the fact I don`t like him at all this week.
Originally Posted by Quoted Balpa article
The extra fuel that the navlog requires if there is an increase in weight is often quoted as proof of the increased burn. You should remember that this increase is just a fudge factor to get the aeroplane away without a recalculation. If you ask for the recalculation you will see the real (very small) increase, if there is any increase at all.
Every 100 kilos less extra fuel that is loaded is now, on paper, a saving of four kilos per hour (note how ‘per hour of cruise’ has disappeared)
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You don't have to believe everything you read in the "The Log." I'm perfectly happy believing (Newtonian physics?) that takes more fuel to climb a heavier aircraft (Work = etc...) and also content with the notion that the fuel burn of a heavy aircraft (Lift/Drag/Thrust relationship) will be greater than a light one - by about 3-4%. Just like states in the aircraft's climb and cruise tables (Narita and 747 references were obviously removed).
As ever, this thread shows that they are the "Fill it up" mob, "an extra ton for the wife and kids" mob and the rest of us (maybe a minority) who will regularly depart on minimum (or maybe even less) than flight plan fuel.
Head well above parapet, waiting for incoming...
PM
PS. Before someone busts a blood vessel, let me explain "less than minimum." You arrive at destination having carried round trip fuel and you are 75kgs "short" of a 3,797 kg requirement. Do you call the fuel truck out? Or do you look at weather, think about the route, look at the mean time of similar flights, consider taxi fuel, etc.? ie. Do you think? Some do and some don't.
As ever, this thread shows that they are the "Fill it up" mob, "an extra ton for the wife and kids" mob and the rest of us (maybe a minority) who will regularly depart on minimum (or maybe even less) than flight plan fuel.
Head well above parapet, waiting for incoming...
PM
PS. Before someone busts a blood vessel, let me explain "less than minimum." You arrive at destination having carried round trip fuel and you are 75kgs "short" of a 3,797 kg requirement. Do you call the fuel truck out? Or do you look at weather, think about the route, look at the mean time of similar flights, consider taxi fuel, etc.? ie. Do you think? Some do and some don't.