Originally Posted by
itry2fly
thanks for your response however not quite what I was looking for. let me try to explain, let's say we are flying from ord to lax, lax has bad weather and we have to hold for 1 hour burning 3000lbs an hour, min fuel is 2700lbs, we choose an alternate of San Diego. how would you calculate at what point you would leave the holding pattern? would it be your min fuel + how much it takes to fly from the holding fix to alt.
That is how I would calculate it, but if you are looking for a legal interpretation, I'm afraid it isn't that clear. I'm not aware of a regulation that states that you can't burn into your reserve fuel while holding. I wouldn't do it, but I've heard tales of those who have. The whole fuel to destination+fuel to alternate+reserve fuel is a preflight planning number. Having met that requirement, once you take off that regulation no longer applies.