New Fuel Initiative = Watch out
Read something about the company and the union cooperating on a new fuel initiative somewhere. Yesterday showed up at the jet (MD10) to fly PHX-MEM and see that i am to arrive with 19K with NQA as alt... This for me was a new "low" fuel level. I added 3K regardless of the weather which wasn't a factor. No problem. Four hours later, i am j/s back on the MEM-PHX MD10. They are given a release of 18K to land and IWA (Williams Apt) as an alternate. For those not familiar with it, it's the old Williams AFB and is about 20 or so miles SE of PHX. Never seen that before this week either. The weather fcast is great for PHX from the fedex boys although the local stations in PHX the nite before had been saying chance of afternoon tstorms. Long story short, massive dust / tstorm in PHX at arrival, we do one turn in holding and a little pleading with appch and we make it in just before 50kt gusts close the airport. Storm engulfs airport from E to W so IWA was no option. We landed with 16K. The second MD10 from MEM 20 minutes behind lands in TUS and is 3 hours late arriving PHX. If we had to go to TUS I imagine we would be declaring emergency fuel although i wasn't the Capt.
My point here is, be very careful accepting these new "fuel initiatives" and temper it with what seems to be some poor weather forecasting.