The crew would be blamed and rightly so.

If any of us “run out of gas and crash” because of pressure from management any blame falls completely on us. If you take the gas offered and conditions support that decision and you continue to make good decisions, explain to me how the situation results in running out of gas and crashing.

Diverting? Declaring an emergency? Landing short? Sure. But “crashing” simply due to lack of fuel?
Let’s try to stay in the reality ballpark.

My thought exactly

Coming from another airline I was surprised by how much extra fuel we carry compared to the passenger world. No kidding we didn’t even ask one another “how does the fuel look” and I don’t remember adding extra fuel regularly like we do here. You would be late if you did add fuel so nobody did it. But our dispatchers were much better with keeping us informed about the flows into an airport — especially New York and Chicago.

Spare me the phrases, “but our system form”, “our business model is different”, and “we guarantee our product is on time unlike the passenger industry.”

I always thought it was funny during the interview we have to make a life or death PIC decision in a few minutes but operationally we carry a lot of fuel.

If you really feel the need to add extra, if possible diverts are limited, add it. Otherwise it just seems silly in the middle of the night with the national airspace dead to have a bunch of fuel.

And don’t take this message the wrong way. I have no problems calling the dispatcher and letting them know we added fuel. But we have all flown with the Captain who always addded fuel. That mentality needs to die.

I assume you’re a new hire straight to the 11 from the Navy. I might be wrong. Yes we have more options than when you were blue water but there is no recovery tanker overhead hawking you when you are trick or treat on the ball. This plane takes a little more gas to make it around the pattern than the rhino and the pattern gets a little more strung out than the pattern in Oceana or Lemoore. You’re right that some guys are over the top on how much gas they carry. Most carry enough to have options so we keep those paychecks. As your paycheck grows you’ll like to keep it too. Do the math. One divert wipes out all your fuel savings of carrying 2000-3000 lbs less each flight for a few years.

i'm curious, Are these MD11 fuel numbers? What is emergency fuel for FedEx on the MD11?

Currently it's 11,000 lbs.

Our new fuel policy will go into effect in July and will lower that to 9K. They have decided to stick with a hard fuel weight due to the MD11 fuel system complexity.

The rest of the fleets will use a "dynamic 30 minute Fuel" which apparently is "dynamic" because it will be determined using the planned LGW for that flight.

Guilty.

And it's pansy.

Thanks Adlerdriver

Emergency fuel at Ups on the MD11 is 9,000 lbs also

All this, yet we nearly flamed out an Airbus.... Good thing those gauges are accurate. I had the fuels slips off recently so they had to dip the tanks. Came up with the 3 different numbers.. Maint used the best guess to figure out with was right.

Question for captains: You are over LIT inbound to MEM and your FMS shows you can expect to land with just a little less than emergency fuel. Weather is VFR and traffic is normal number of inbounds. What do you do?