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.

I can't speak for others but I don’t particularly feel that - it’s more of an encouragement to think a bit about discretionary fuel before arbitrarily adding an amount. On longer sectors, the cost of taking extra rises non-linearly as the airborne time increases. Also, there is a difference between carrying less fuel (nobody is being asked to do that with what is on the flight plan) and not taking as much extra if there aren’t any obvious reasons to load more.

The question is, if you do add more, what are you going to do with it at the other end?

I’ve seen on several occasions fuel decisions made with pressure (perceived or actual) by commanders which could have very nearly ended up in a dire scenario airborne with little to no options. It was just fortunate the remaining cheese layers didn’t present.

The issue won’t be the average crew reducing extra fuel carriage on the normal fair weather day. It’s when fatigue, lack of professionalism, lack of experience etc line up on that wrong day, with the wrong weather and someone decides to accept a non suitable alternate to save a bit of ££. “It’s only a prob 30 tempo”

Any, no matter how small, pressure to take less additional fuel will eventually result in an incident or worse.

extra fuel
 

Wx concerns are always a "no-brainer" for the carriage of extra fuel - however I have always felt that the opposite may be the case. By that I mean, take for example LGW, nice wx, 50 movements per hour on a single runway. It doesn't take much of a runway blockage/inspection for the delays to build rapidly with perhaps many aircraft stuck with minimum fuel all perhaps assuming that they will get an easy routing to their (near) alternate.

Was taking the pee..iirc it was 7% per hour burn for extra fuel.
Wasn’t on the comet but gripper and Iron duck before I had enough and left for pastures green.
Lost my license in 94 but was offered an inducement to stop me trying to fight it. Basically suffered from neurotoxins which in hind sight the medical branch knew about but kept stumm on. Certainly enjoyed not sitting in front of an instrument panel for 11 hours in a rarefied and polluted atmosphere.

Wiggy is correct there was a extra fuel league table with persistent offenders being called up to the office..most would write condescending comments on the nav log as to the reason they loaded more.

Taken over a couple of aircraft without final reserve and the worst experience was in the crew bunk when the double crew did a go around, forgetting the gear and not doing a full clean up knowing we had just lost alternate fuel in RIO when ATC had recently managed to plant two airliners in the mountains that surrounded it. They got onto another runway but we didn’t ask but assumed it was we land off this approach regardless.. a lot of alcohol was consumed as the sun rose of copacabana.

Sorry but that smacks of semantics, of course BA is not going to reward people for carrying less than the legally required minimum fuel.

Fuel efficiency courses, anonymous league tables so you can see your relative position, all fine. As you say they encourage you to think if you need that extra fuel.
Creating a financial incentive to carry less fuel, creates a conflict of interest, no matter how you describe it.

BA themselves obviously think it will make a difference, otherwise they wouldn’t be seeking to implement it.

Whether the conflict of interest will affect safety however, remains to be seen. If the scheme successfully reduces discretionary upload, the rewards might be increased, creating a greater safety conflict

Fuel league tables
 

I once worked for an outfit that started producing tables of "extra uplift/captain" When we were called in to see the data it was apparent that most were in the 95% of the bell curve however one unlikely captain was way down on his "extras"

It transpired that he was the only one to refuse to do "fuel tankering"! hence his good result!!

Personally it doesn’t? I have no desire to carry any more fuel than I feel necessary to do the job as a) it’s not good for the environment, b) it reduces the profitability of the company I work for and c) it is unprofessional. If I can get paid some of the savings I make through engaging my brain and actively managing the situation, I’m quite OK with that!
As Jet A-1 is hovering around USD 1,500 a tonne at the moment, it would make quite a difference to most companies’ finances, especially if they are not significantly hedged.
Again, I’m not seeing a safety issue, just one of common sense: if every flight took off with minimum fuel, the amount of diversions would very likely increase significantly and thus the overall fuel usage and associated recovery costs. This is not good for anyone and most operators realise this so would not want to incentivise it. All I see is a desire to get their pilots to use some sort of repeatable methodology when deciding on discretionary fuel that takes into account the situation on the day.

When I first started, I flew with quite a few captains who always loaded a lot more than required and to a youngster it seemed impressive; looking back for many of them it was a comfort blanket that insulated them a lot of the time from actually having to make a decision. Also, making the aeroplane significantly heavier that it needs to be has downsides to it: engines working harder, less choice of cruising levels, increased wear on brakes/tyres, more energy to dissipate in an RTO, etc. It has similarities to people who won’t do intersection takeoffs for purported safety reasons but are quite happy to use derates. :confused:

Few contradictions there IMO

But let me put it like this then, would you be happy for the bonus to be linked to not exceeding a certain percentage of go-arounds?

Great! Don’t want to have contradictions.
Errr, no? But what has that got to do with discretionary fuel carriage or have I missed something?

Why would you object to having the bonus linked to a specific percentage of go-arounds but not fuel?

If a monetary reward doesn’t create a safety issue for fuel planning, why would it create one for go-around decisions?

This whole thing is more about encouraging single engine taxi and mindful APU use. And the scale of the incentive is so small, I doubt it will have any impact at all on final fuel decisions.

Don't forget this is not policy yet. It is a very small part of a wide ranging package that has been put to BA pilots which will be voted on in due course.

Adhoc prices for Jet 1A changed today (as they normally do on 1st of the month) at Stansted Airport from 0.65p per litre to £1.12

You can’t compare the two. No pilot wants to go around - the easy decision is to carry on and land. It’s the opposite with fuel. We’d all instinctively like as much fuel as possibly, and the easy / lazy choice is to add extra for no justifiable reason.

Seems to me that the money involved as an incentive is so small as not to make a difference to anyone’s fuel planning strategy, especially if it is done collectively. What’s the point of flying around on the edge of your seat if everyone else is sticking an extra few tonnes on? I have no doubt that the leadership’s team fuel bonus incentives will be massive though!
It needs to be serious money to incentivise , and that’s where the CAA have historically stepped in. However, it seems to me that there is an element of state capture within the CAA now as many inspectors and staff are ex-BA. They also seem to be perpetually recruiting , whether due to high turnover or lack of applicants due to the salaries involved. It seems many jobs are only feasible if you are drawing a pension already and using a CAA job as a top-up.

This incentive is very small, but it is likely to help reduce unnecessary additional fuel carriage, and at least make people consider reduced engine taxi. It certainly isn’t anywhere near big enough to prevent anyone taking additional fuel if they are in any doubt at all. It also means the company can declare it is doing something further to help reduce CO2 emissions. This in turn, is something which some of our big clients can say about the air transport provider they have selected. People like to think they are doing their bit to save the planet.

Because I have an input into how much fuel I carry but don’t have any control over whether I get a visual reference at minima or a runway blocked at a late stage? If ATC call for a GA, can I say negative, bonus in play? A GA decision is rule based, pretty black-and-white; fuel carriage over flight plan is more nuanced and affected by a wide range of factors.

I’m sorry but I absolutely do want to go around for an unstabilised approach!

You absolutely can compare the two, as both have a safety implication, if monetary reward has no behavioural modifications that affect safety. Then you can’t object to its use in another safety critical area

Fuel decisions are massively rule based! Exhibit part A operations manual.

Why would you not go-around after an instruction from ATC, or no visual contact at minimums, if a bonus has no influence on your decision making.

Do you have control of the weather? To paraphrase… Are you gonna tell the FO, sorry no extra fuel for the thunderstorms bonus in play

We are talking about extra fuel loaded at the captain’s discretion here, not what constitutes a legal fuel plan.

The point I’m trying to make (poorly it seems) is that there are some things that can be incentivised, like carrying less discretionary fuel when conditions allow and some things that can’t/shouldn’t because they involve breaking SOPs/law to achieve, like landing below minima.

Which is why we base our decisions on logic and experience. If you identify factors that are likely to increase the fuel burn to the point that the chances of not reaching your destination are significant, then you might need to compensate for that. If things are benign and you have SCF90/95/99 in the plan, then the maths says you are justified in going with that.

One of the points of the exercise is to reduce the routine carriage of discretionary fuel that is very likely not to be needed and for some destinations which are regularly served we have actual data to prove this.

I’m not BA, and haven’t ever been. But when I started at my company some 10 years ago as a brand new FO on the 737 the culture was very much one of piling on the fuel. 600kg ( 15 ish minutes fuel) would be added on almost routinely.

I actually remember the first time I was flying back to my home base, with a minimum diversion fuel of 2.3T, and the FMC showing that we were going to reach destination with 2.9T. It was the first time I was returning to home base with less than 3T on arrival and at the time I remarked that we were really tight on fuel 🤣

things are a fair bit different now though-and it would seem to the outsider that this incentive is to try and encourage folk who perhaps just pile on 20/30mins extra fuel routinely on a severe CAVOK day to consider reducing the extra