Originally Posted by
2StgTurbine
I hope that new captains here decide to actually think about fuel planning rather than blindly go off a number they heard in training with zero context placed around it. Otherwise, you might end up doing a needless divert because, after years of treating 6.0, 5.0, or whatever conservative number some random instructor told you, you started thinking that THAT number was actually minimum fuel. There was an ASAP where the crew declared emergency fuel but somehow landed with more than 45 minutes of fuel
I think you and HK may be talking past eachother. I've been on 3 fleets here and on each one there was a gouge number that most people wanted to land with at the most distant alternate. However, I have only seen this number referenced when verifying fuel planning while on the ground during preflight. I have never ever ever ever seen a CA or FO reference that gouge number once in flight when evaluating a divert. Usually it was min reserve plus whatever buffer the crew was comfortable using, generally quite a bit less than the gouge fuel planning number.