Anything to this story?

At United Air Lines, the pilots are never questioned when they want to add fuel, for whatever reason.

Having said that, we DO carry less fuel than we used to. It had been determined that we had been carrying more fuel than necessary, thereby costing more than needed. All in all, it was a good thing.
 
"FAA regulations are precise: A plane must take off with enough primary fuel to reach its destination and then its most distant alternate airport based on conditions. It must carry a reserve of 45 minutes’ worth of fuel on top of that.'

"primary fuel"??? I think a copy writer misplaced the word "primary" in this sentence. :D

Otherwise, I'm looking forward to what Greg and others have to say, too.
 
Greg Bockelman said:
At United Air Lines, the pilots are never questioned when they want to add fuel, for whatever reason.

Having said that, we DO carry less fuel than we used to. It had been determined that we had been carrying more fuel than necessary, thereby costing more than needed. All in all, it was a good thing.
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I had heard from a friend who flies 757/67s for AA that they are also encouraged to fill up at certain places where the fuel is cheap especially if going somewhere where fuel is more expensive. speaking with him I do not think they are check AirNav but working with the dispatchers.
 
smigaldi said:
I had heard from a friend who flies 757/67s for AA that they are also encouraged to fill up at certain places where the fuel is cheap especially if going somewhere where fuel is more expensive.
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I think Air Jamaica practices this (unofficially) on their "non-stop" flights.
Since the first few gas price spikes of a few years ago I noticed all my return flights from Jamaica to Los Angeles included the captain saying "We may not have enough fuel to make it to LA ... ". Last time we were threatened with an hour's gas stop in PHX but lucked out (and whole cabin cheered). OTOH, my cousin came up last week and they had an unscheduled 2.5 hr gas stop in Miami (20 min north of JA).:mad:
 
When I first started dispatching in the 90's, we used to plan flights with 25-30% "extra" fuel on top of FAR required fuel - not really a company policy, just a nice "comfortable" number. I can't remember when the company started putting pressure on us to reduce that extra fuel, seems like sometime in the 2002 timeframe. At my last airline, the fuel policy was FAR fuel, then a couple hundered pounds extra - of course more fuel if it was needed for enroute wx deviations, known ATC delays, etc (although the FARs do state this is required extra fuel).

Anytime a pilot wanted more, they would call the dispatcher and it was supposed to be an easy change on the release, and continue with the day. Of course, there are some dispatchers that felt their fuel planning was just fine and would get into pi$$ing matches with the captains and it would get ugly. That was the exception though, most of the time it was a pretty simple process...some dispatchers just wanted to know if there were conditions they may not be aware of when giving the extra fuel so they could plan their other flights accordingly.
 
121Dispatch said:
Anytime a pilot wanted more, they would call the dispatcher and it was supposed to be an easy change on the release, and continue with the day. Of course, there are some dispatchers that felt their fuel planning was just fine and would get into pi$$ing matches with the captains and it would get ugly.
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I'm just waiting for the day when dispatch tells captains "Flight 123 next to you came from ABC with full tanks of cheaper gas. Siphon xxx pounds from them." :D
 
From what I've heard (and read recently), there is pressure by the airlines to avoid tankering fuel because it's wasted money. However, none of the captains I've met (CO, UA, AA, SWA, JetBlue, NWA, Alaska) have had any issues with dispatch over "Captain's fuel", which is their discretionary uplift, even on the domestic routes. Now there may be bean counters or dispatchers out there who disagree, but I believe that most of the airlines know that the Captain's judgement often saves their bacon, as the discretionary fuel can often mean that a flight DOESN'T have to divert.
 
I was on a Sydney to LA flight and after leaving the gate a T'storm came over. Just before takeoff the pilot came on and said if we don't depart in the next n minutes we will have to go back to the gate and add fuel.
 
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