Originally Posted by
sailingfun
Before you burned that deep into reserves you should have been considering airports D-X. Was there not another airport anywhere within range with a suitable runway? Your alternate airport C is a paperwork airport. Often the flight planned alternate is not the best choice.
We considered those. The closest had closed towers and didn't have services on the ramp we would have parked at. The best suitable would have been farther away and would have burned all of that fuel we had to hold with plus the fuel for the first alternate.
The weather was improving at B and had arrivals coming in about halfway through our wait, if we absolutely had to, could have declared an emergency and got in. Frankly, had we gathered all that info before we even touched a hold, we probably would have went direct. But we didn't.