Originally Posted by
SaltyDog
Fair enough. Welcome aboard.
Thanks.
Agreed that it takes some decisions, not all simply connect the dots. ATC may know something the crew doesn't. Afterall, minimum fuel is essentially a useless ATC call by regulation. Simply telling ATC you cannot take undue delay,"min fuel" well, ATC doesn't give any airplane an undue delay <g>.
And that 'undue delay' is also a very loose term. What constitutes an 'undue delay'. Very fuzzy.
If I fly into clouds as a non-instrumented pvt pilot, tell the controller of my predicament, and explain that I have difficulty controlling the aircraft, what do you suppose ATC will do? They may make you an emergency aircraft, the pilot may, or may not be aware of this at the time.
Hadn't thought of that but a valid point.
Never met "Berto" but know him.
Will continue and plan new alternates and let dispatch join in and get an ARTR as necessary. If situation deteriorates, then I will pick new place to land if believe safety an issue. Otherwise I will continue if calculations and circumstances allow.
I guess my point in the example was that early in the flight, with the current conditions, the calculations indicate a min fuel arrival. A few times going to SEA we had to declare min fuel when in the midwest and that usually caught ATC off guard. Sometimes they asked about our fuel state and we explained that according to current conditions and current calculations, we would arrive min fuel. A few times we 'un-declared' when headwinds ceased, we climbed higher or got better routing.
Thanks for the input.