Originally Posted by
itry2fly
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.
Your dispatch should have figured fuel from destination to alternate and that includes an approach at destination, fly to alternate and an approach.
But there are additional problems. If you are holding, others are probably holding also and if SAN is the nearest suitable, everyone else is going to be thinking SAN also. And SAN may then restrict arrivals.
A second point is IF you elect to divert, don't get suckered into deciding to return to destination when the field opens up which it seems to do invariably only minutes after you elect to divert. The problem here is that if destination goes back down or some other event occurs, you are now BELOW required fuel to alternate which is NOT good. And really, all this should be discussed and decided before you turn #1 or #2 in the chocks. Makes life a lot less stressful.