Originally Posted by
Min Fuel
And that 'undue delay' is also a very loose term. What constitutes an 'undue delay'. Very fuzzy.
Am sure you would agree, that is why we desire experience in the cockpit.
In my Navy flying, certain regulations were written to allow judgement. Make a bad one, plenty written to either train/educate/punish. A good one was already allowed/permitted within the reg.
FAA has similiar language. It often allows one to make good, safe, rational decisions based on a fluid set of circumstances not all known before departure time. A set of dominoes. Undue delay is determined at the time by qualified operators in the system. We train safety as breaking the chain, the opposite is true, Safe, good decisions clearly must follow a chain as well. Undue delay would have to be made at the time based on available info.
Your example, headwinds. If stronger, then the chain/domino model says: Stop for gas if would arrive below calculated fuel that would put us well below company recommended min fuel. My company has an emergency fuel and would be on deck well before and would declare emergency to ensure on deck prior to that point, but would accept fuel below company defined recommended landing fuel in certain situations [VMC/open, approved alternates etc]. In some of my actual circumstances, we did an ARTR on alternates to lower the fuel necessary to safely make destination. If no alternate required, then we worked with the dispatcher to agree on acceptable diverts if the profile required as described in instance below.
Originally Posted by
Min Fuel
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.
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My approach would not to mention my state of fuel to ATC unless
I was being vectored repeatedly off of flt plan. I hold the Capt and dispatcher accountable to carefully plan for contingincies. In your example, headwinds and alt assignments, often, when the company wants to minimize fuel onboard, should have been considered prior to departure.
An example: OAK-SDF. SVR turbulence was keeping traffic low in the west. It was known, and dispatch allowed the fuel necessary to remain low through the forecast area. When we were supposed to climb, we went non RVSM compliant (instrument problems). ATC would not approve RVSM alt. We would remain low. It was our 'problem' and though we asked ATC for RVSM relief, they were not obligated to approve for safety reasons. We then arranged a plan to land at a place company could minimize service disruption should we not meet fuel calculated to be safe on deck at just below FOM recommended landing fuel.