thanks for your response however not quite what I was looking for. let me try to explain, let's say we are flying from ord to lax, lax has bad weather and we have to hold for 1 hour burning 3000lbs an hour, min fuel is 2700lbs, we choose an alternate of San Diego. how would you calculate at what point you would leave the holding pattern? would it be your min fuel + how much it takes to fly from the holding fix to alt.