BA fuel saving Cashback
 

Is this an early April 1st joke but CNN Biz and Bloomberg reporting on scheme to save fuel with up to 1% salary reward.
Back in the day this was tried without financial compensation but it didn’t end well when a three engine jet attempted take off with two engines.
In addition,the fuel league tables for P1 led to a race to the bottom of the table.
History repeats or a dangerous escalation by management who rarely fly the routes and aircraft.

I don’t know anybody who would load less fuel than they wanted to for such little financial gain.

In the 70s the money fleet was the BAC111 out of Manchester which earnt sacks of deutschmarks for a 4 night stops and membership of the officers mess in Berlin - cheap grub and booze! Mate did a trip with a skipper who ate and drank the passenger catering and had four aluminium foil packets containing sandwiches labeled days of the week for his evening nourishment in the hotel paid for by BEA. Breakfast was free.
1% of a couple of tons of fuel isn't to be sniffed at.

Will the CAA allow this?
A monetary reward for carrying less fuel, could create a bit of a safety conflict?

I don't think it is a good idea but I'm pretty sure they are not the first to do so...

It's not about loading less fuel than you need, it's to try and stop the people who take extra fuel for no justifiable reason.

I've seen it countless times, people scratching around for a vague, tenuous and unjustifiable reason to take an extra 500 kgs which just sits there unburnt in the tanks on arrival on a CAVOK day. It costs the business money, it's unprofessional and it's bad for the environment.

BA will never stop you from taking extra fuel when you need it. Period.

Speaking for the 320 fleet, one engine taxi on departure/arrival and considered use of fuel has been embedded into BA SOPs for years. It shouldn’t be a bonus - it should be paid immediately and back-dated. Most folk, after considering the big picture - safety and workload etc. have been doing this for ages. Most other airlines have some form of green ops…

I don't think it is a good idea but I'm pretty sure they are not the first to do so...

Interesting, I have never encountered this scenario. What would anyone gain?
Instead countless times I have had days where my colleague on the right could not see a reason to take extra fuel and where were grateful that I used my experience to load extra fuel when things did not go according to plan. Obviously if things worked out and the extra fuel wasn’t used some on the lower end of the situational awareness may think that it should not have been loaded in the first place.
An observation is that those reluctant to load fuel get very nervous when things don’t go plan and in panic make worse decisions.
If you are going to take min fuel: know the fuel policy (it is a minimum, and a “can” not a “must”), don’t hesitate to divert.

magic fuel? How does it remain unburnt when there is a burn penalty for carrying the extra weight?

As for BA in the old days I flew with a bully boy manager who ignored the normal fact of an hours holding starting at Clacton with the result we did a technical diversion from 28 right to 28 left to stay legal.
The company not good at managing fuel as I remember which included Shirley declaring an emergency have flown across the states and the Atlantic on three and trying to transfer fuel using the jettison pumps then declaring a mayday…and I won’t mention Concorde’s history..whoops

There is nothing like a few extra tons when you are in the hold waiting for the airport to reopen whilst you are trying to find a level to reduce ice accretion and your alternâtes are single runway with similar weather.

Nothing wrong with an incentive that makes people think about how much fuel to take rather than just taking extra for the sake of it. And also maybe make people think twice about taking more fuel to get back at their airline because they’re annoyed with them. Yes it happens. And no one is going to take an unsafe amount of fuel for 1% of their salary - not worth losing 100% of it over 1%!! I’d like to think the modern airline pilot balances the operation with a sensible well thought out amount of fuel, being aware that extra fuel costs money and carbon emissions. And fuel comfort levels vary dependant on experience (total and experience of the route you’re operating) and knowledge of fuel policy. I have some months where I don’t take much extra, others I do. It mostly depends on the weather and destination.

When ‘less fuel’ is talked about, it means trying to do more Reduced Engine Taxi (RET), less APU when it isn’t required and other stuff like that and to at least make people think before they add discretionary fuel.

A legal flight plan using SCF caters for the vast majority of flights. When it looks like it might not, most companies (BA included) expect their commanders to put on whatever they need to make the flight successful. Personally, I don’t think there is such a thing as an unsafe amount of fuel, just an unwise one from a commercial perspective: the point is to get from A to B, not go directly to C, D or F (or back to A) to pick up enough fuel to get to B on the second attempt. As I always say, it’s not how much fuel you set off with, it’s what you do when it’s running out and that can happen irrespective of what you took originally.

1%? Taxable? Really?

Soon you will be asked to fill to the brim if fuel is cheaper elsewhere.

You've missed the point yet weirdly I think you know what I mean, I'm not looking for a point scoring argument over the nuances of carrying fuel.

I really enjoyed your war story though, it reminded me how much flying has changed since BA flew the Comet.

Hope you're enjoying your retirement and the final salary pension old boy :ok:

Fuel league tables are every managers wet dreams. This is dangerous. End of.

FWiW and with the rider this is as I recall it BA have (or did) run league tables of sorts for quite a few years.

If you could be bothered (I usually wasn't) you could log in, see roughly where you were "on ze list" and your own figures but no-one elses...the reported financial incentive is new.

Soon you will be asked to fill to the brim if fuel is available :rolleyes:

I’ve been exposed to fuel tables for a long time and, as Wiggy says, they were informational. If you’d had a month of Caribbean hurricanes or CAT3 all day in Europe as opposed to CAVOK, then it was pretty meaningless. From where I see it, as long as you follow your OM A fuel policy on the ground and in the air, you should be safe. The risk is only in an unnecessary diversion/return if the signs were present that there were likely to be significant delays/weather at destination and you ignored this - which is poor airmanship but not dangerous per se, IMO.

Fuel tables are perfectly fine, financial reward for carrying less fuel creates a conflict of interests IMO.