Originally Posted by
JustAMushroom
In the 121 world you are required to maintain communication channels with your company either through AIRINC or ACARS or some other approved method while airborn.
You can not continue to your destination if your alternate has dropped below alternate mins. This would be a time where you would add/change and alternate while airborne.
As previous posts have said. There is no requirement to land with the reserve fuel. It's for you to use if needed with no strings attached. In the case of going around at min fuel it seems safer to stay in the pattern and keeps eyes on the airport than bug out and go to an unknown alternate miles away.
Just looked it up and that's our procedure as well. If ACARS is inop we are recquired to monitor ARINC.
Now my question is, is this a shared responsibility of the flight crew and dispatch? Or is just dispatch supposed to be checking the weather while we are enroute and notifying us via ARINC if we need to amend our alternate? I'm sure it's in the books too but I don't have time to look through them right now.