Statistical contingency fuel
 

What is the expected benefit of such a calculation? It has a faint smell of a financial departments attempt at cost savings by way of finding another way of cutting down the required min.block fuel.

But just for the fun of it, let us assume a flight from A to B and let it be operated by the same aircraft once every day of the year. The Min.block will not be the same for every flight, it will depend on meteorological conditions, the choice of alternate, the aircrafts weight and so on. But there will be an average burn, lower on days with low traffic or with favourable wind conditions, higher on days with nasty weather, slots, holdings and so on. On many flights, the cont. fuel will not be touched at all, on others, it will not be sufficient by far.

Now, what contingency fuel is to be included in the Min.block? The average over all flights, bringing the contingency fuel close to 0? The average, but no less than 3% or 5%? There is no saving in this, and this is already covered by allowing commanders to select a suitable amount of extra fuel and, company dependent, compulsory additional fuel. The maximum used over the considered timeframe? This is hardly an economic and reasonable choice...

Flying with the lowest possible amount of fuel does not always save costs to the company but has the potential to cause additional losses due to missed connections, unnecessary diversions and so on. This is what is often forgotten by companies.

We've had it for a few years. Works really well.