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COMAIR 20 minutes til flameout; No Problem

  • Thread starter Thread starter NSDQ
  • Start date Start date
  • Watchers Watchers 17

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Please don't tell me you listen to this crap when your not at work?
 
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NSDQ said:
No I was up in the corridor being thankful my family wasn't sitting behind these two yahoos.
Click to expand...


Up in the corridor????
 
I don't want to listen to the whole thing again, but were they a go around, or missed approach? I thought I heard that call sign at the begining of the tape.
 
That was informative. No information on the circumstances, yet you slam them. Oh and I suppose its not possible that they padded their time til exhaustion at all? And according to you 45 minutes at cruise should = 45 minutes fully configured at 2K?

Let me guess, if you had 20 minutes of fuel remaining, you would accept 19 minutes worth of vectors? I'm guessing you'd pad it a bit too. Or do you always go down to bare minimum "bingo" fuel before you divert, assuming you'll be cleared direct to the outer marker of your alternate, number 1 for the approach?
 
Alright, without listening to all of it again.....There were T-Storms along the arrival into NYC, everyone was being vectored around for spacing etc., these guys call up and say that they are approaching min fuel, approach calls back and ask how much fuel til fuel exhaustion, the guys are not sure what he means by that so the controller clarifies it, how long til the engines quit running? The crew replies 20 minutes (still no emergency declared). 3 planes ahead of them are turned off the arrival to give them priority. They are switched to approach. Approach diverts two planes to another runway for an inbound emergency, they reply we didn't declare an emergency. Approach say we declared one for you. Thats it in a nutshell. Bottomline if your still up approach with only 20 minutes til flameout and you haven't decided that you have an emergency....I don't want any of my family in the back.

Flame away....but you only have 20 minutes to do it.............
 
I think New York had a bad experience quite a few years ago with an Avianca plane that ran out of fuel and crashed. There were a whole bunch of other factors involved, including a disfunctional cockpit and CRM. But in a nutshell these guys declared minimum fuel when in fact they were already of fumes. they flamed out at the outer marker going to JFK.
 
When I was there we didn't have to wear uniforms. We were not professionals. Obviously the plane went slower.
 
Just the other night going into EWR our fuel was lower than we would have liked. We accepted a re-route early that was supposed to protect us from having to hold. That cost us 800 lbs. Guess what? We had to hold anyways. They held us twice on the philbo both with efc times that were shameful. We did not declare min fuel, but advised ATC of our time from such declaration.

The ace up our sleeve was an FA that was getting close to max time by the fars. We talked to our dispatch, who talked to tracon. Where ever we set down, was going to be the end of the trip. Apparently we really cut in line...to the point where apprch at ewr asked us what our emergency was.

"There is no emergency. We are close to min fuel and having to divert."

'Well, you cut in front of about 12 airplanes so...'

"Regardless of the verbiage, we are here"(CA was great)

so they got us in.

It appears that there is still some vagueness in regards to the ATC guys passing along information (just like Avianca). State your desires/situation boldly guys.
 
If they hadn't declared MINIMUM FUEL at 45 min remaining on landing, that is a problem. Regardless of whatever else may have transpired, in the USA, a declaration of MIN FUEL has weight and there's nothing bad or illegal about being in that condition.
 
From what I know, all OM manuals state that you must declare an emergency at 45 min fuel remaining. How you can get to 20 minutes of fuel without other factors involved, I don't know. From the info we have here, it was stupid and unsafe for the crew to get themselves into that situation without being assertive about their emergency situation.
 
The_Russian said:
From what I know, all OM manuals state that you must declare an emergency at 45 min fuel remaining. How you can get to 20 minutes of fuel without other factors involved, I don't know. From the info we have here, it was stupid and unsafe for the crew to get themselves into that situation without being assertive about their emergency situation.
Click to expand...

Our manuals stated that you should declare "MIN FUEL" not declare an emergency with 45 minutes remaining.
 
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