Declaring Minimum Fuel

[Rattler71]

Always declare minimum fuel. The reserve is for you, what are you going to do on short final when you have no green light on the gear. Have enough fuel to always go around, that is minimum fuel. Usually around 30 minutes is it.

uuhh Huh?

 

['72Gremlin]

uuhh Huh?

Me, too. I'm trying to find in the FARs where it says "usually about 30 mins is it..."

 

[Typhoon1244]

Our company recommends we declare "min. fuel" if we're going to arrive at the destination--or the alternate--with less than our planned reserve fuel. Personally, I think that's a pretty good rule-of-thumb for everybody.

Have enough fuel to always go around, that is minimum fuel.

Are you kidding? A go-around and landing takes, what? Ten minutes? About 250 pounds (in a CRJ)?

That's not minimum fuel, that's an emergency!

 

[TurboS7]

An emergency is when you have a double flame out at 410 and you can't get them re lit. Now you are a glider and you don't have to worry about calling it a fuel emergency. Lear pilots live in one world and commuter pilots live in another I am convinced of that. We used to taxi out on one in the Lear and lite the other when we were cleared into position to hold or takeoff. Saved about 200 to 300 lbs of fuel.

 

[FN FAL]

Flightjock. Is that like a nylon brief with patches and zippers and stuff?

Hahaha...sounds like "commando" version of thong for gay guys...not that there's anything wrong with that. (seinfelt reference)

 

[Typhoon1244]

An emergency is when you have a double flame out at 410 and you can't get them re lit. Now you are a glider and you don't have to worry about calling it a fuel emergency. Lear pilots live in one world and commuter pilots live in another I am convinced of that.

So...what are you saying? The Pinnacle accident was caused by fuel exhaustion?

Are you further saying that regional pilots don't care about fuel?

Please elaborate, because I'm trying to figure out how outraged I should be by this post.

 

[TurboS7]

When you fly a Lear 20 series Lear you are low on fuel before you even start up. The objective is to land with as much fuel as possible and get the job done. Once you get below 800 lbs it was considered prudent to shut one engine down and transfer the fuel to one tank and land on one. If you had to go around you had plenty of fuel for the one engine. With the advent of fan engines and the twenty series Lear going away all those little tricks aren't needed anymore.


Take the commuter pilot and throw him in that enviroment and he will think we are crazy. Take the Lear Pilot and throw him in the commuter/regional enviorment and he will kill himself and a bunch of people. As a pilot we usually adapt to whatever it takes to complete the task within a safety envelope. Air America pilots operated in X places out of Laos, Cambodia, and other X places, they did crazy things but lost very few pilots due to pilot error/judgement. Hence airlines have produced SOP's to try and standardize the standard. One thing I hate is when pilots start spewing out FAR's, that is BS. FAR's have nothing to do with safety, they are a minimum standard there to protect the US Government from liability. Good procedures and manuals and pilot standardization have everything to do with safety and are very important.So there is nothing wrong with a commuter/regional pilot, when they think of landing they think about the 50 miles of being jacked around at ATL. When a Lear pilot thinks of landing they think about leaving 410 82 miles from destination and not touching the thrust for spoolup until 500 feet BTW that take 300lbs of fuel. Big diffrence. I am an advocate of lot's of fuel and even my airline complains that sometimes I land with too much. I have 173 people behind me, who cares, these beast don't run on air.

 

[TurboS7]

Typhoon PM me about the RJ flameout at 410 if you want.

 

[Typhoon1244]

Take the commuter pilot and throw him in that enviroment and he will think we are crazy. Take the Lear Pilot and throw him in the commuter/regional enviorment and he will kill himself and a bunch of people.

Yeah, okay, I'll buy that. I will say this: contrary to what you may think, we (most of us) aren't in the habit of burning gas just for the hell of it...especially in this economy! But we're not about to start shutting engines down and making Space Shuttle arrivals, either. (I've learned passengers dislike body angles in excess of ten degrees.)

And Pinnacle crashed because they were flying at 410 at 0.55M and ten or more degrees nose-up, not because they ran out of gas.

 

[TurboS7]

That is correct. Never go below 210 IAS anytime you are above even 370, beware of the increase in ISA when there is a Southern Jet.