Ugh, those selfish pilots can’t be bothered to help their airlines return to profitability. No, instead they’re whining to NASA that they’re being forced to fly “uncomfortably low on fuel” and that “safety for passengers and crews could be compromised.”
These flight simulator jockeys want more fuel, but that isn’t likely to happen anytime soon even with oil at $117 a barrel and crashing fast. The FAA finds the situation perfectly acceptable.
“We can’t dabble in the business policies or the personnel policies of an airline,” said FAA spokesman Les Dorr. He said there was no indication safety regulations were being violated.
The September 2005 safety alert was issued by NASA’s confidential Aviation Safety Reporting System, which allows air crews to report safety problems without fear their names will be disclosed.
With fuel prices now their biggest cost, airlines are aggressively enforcing new policies designed to reduce consumption.
Just look at the complaints flooding into NASA’s Aviation Safety Reporting System:
“I know our program manager is ranking captains on landing with less fuel. I don’t care to be ranked. I think this is a safety problem and I believe fuel is your friend,” the captain said. “Looking back, I would have liked more gas yesterday, and I was already carrying tanker fuel. If I wouldn’t have had this extra there would have been real problems.”
The captain of a Boeing 747 said he began to run low on fuel after meeting strong headwinds over the Atlantic en route to JFK in New York in February. After contacting his company to discuss a refueling stop, the captain said he was told by his operations manager that the flight actually needed less fuel than had been loaded on board and would have enough to get to JFK without stopping.
But by the time he reached JFK, his fuel was “far below my comfort zone and probably less than the minimum fuel required by the FARs (federal aviation regulations),” the captain said. “Our fuel situation had not become critical yet, but had we had any delay, I would have had to declare a fuel emergency.”
“I am not sure if the ‘flight plan’ as given to me by my company was a real flight plan, or if they were just telling me it was so that I would continue to JFK … thus saving them time and expense. … In the future, if such a situation presents itself again, I will divert to my initial destination regardless of what my company says I can do. The safety of my crew far outweighs any financial burden to the company.”
The captain of a Boeing 737 en route to Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport in February said he was forced to divert in bad weather to Palm Beach International Airport to refuel because less than the normal amount of fuel for the flight was loaded before takeoff.
“This was probably the new fuel-saving initiative by the company management to save money,” the captain said. “North-South operation is very unpredictable along the East Coast. I don’t think this is a place where we should skimp on fuel.”
The captain said he had a “lengthy discussion” with his company’s dispatcher “relaying my opinion on the reduced fuel load and my suggestion not to compromise fuel loads in and out of Florida.” But the captain said he received the same reduced amount on his next flight.
“So much for my professional input!” he said.
The airlines have made it clear that pilots who don’t stop whining and start flying will be fired.
American notified dispatchers July 7 that their records on fuel approved for flights would be monitored, and dispatchers not abiding by company guidelines could ultimately be fired.
Union officials responded that “it appears safety has become a second thought” for the company. American and US Airways blame the complaints on labor negotiations – both are in contract talks with the complaining unions.
Look people, it’s been 18 years since a plane crashed because it ran out of fuel. That means there isn’t a problem anymore. Besides, 85 people survived.
Pilots forced to fly low on fuel worry about safety [AP]
Pilots’ reports on low fuel [AP]
Avianca Flight 52 [Wikipedia]
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@Victo:
There is little to no chance of actually running out of fuel. With GPS and advanced flight management systems, as well as highly precises fuel flow gauges, the pilot will know almost immediately after reaching cruise how close it’s going to be on fuel. Planning for airline flights is very technical and very precise. While the is the occasional stronger than expected headwind, this is something that will be realized almost right away, and the FMS combined with the GPS will give the pilot an exact time to the destination and a calculation of how much fuel will remain on-board upon landing. It’s not as if the pilots are being asked to plan to land with only fumes in the tanks, they are being asked to carry only the minimum required fuel (be it company policy or FAA mandated). This isn’t really even a safety issue, as the pilot will know way ahead of time whether there is going to be a problem. At that point, if they do indeed run out of gas, it’s simply bad piloting.
I fail to see how putting less fuel in the plane saves cost. If it’s full at take off and uses 1/2 the fuel then you still have the fuel in the tank. It’s not like it suddenly disappears and they have to buy it again.
@Bevill:
If you would read the comments, you would see that more fuel=more weight. More weight=higher fuel burn. Burning more fuel costs more money.
True story:
Back in the early 90s flying USAir out of Toronto we had to make an emergency landing at Buffalo. The reason, they forgot to refuel in Toronto.
@timmus: Many years ago, I had as my reading material while flying a non-fiction book called something like “Modern Air Disasters” with a photo of an crashed airplane on it. That was fun to read at the airport.
@forgottenpassword:
I wonder what would cost less:
1) Carrying more fuel on the plane
2) Paying off the lawsuits for the family members left behind when this ridiculous fuel management cost savings program results in a crash.
“The safety of my crew far outweighs any financial burden to the company.”
If all he cared about was his crew, he could have tossed some passengers overboard to lighten the plane.
@Bevill: I agree, it’s like these people that put $10 worth of gas, 4 times a week in their car thinking they’ll get better mileage if the buy gas in smaller increments rather than $40 dollars in one shot.
@Bevill: @BiZarRroBALlmeR:
Weight has a much higher impact on the performance of an airplane than does a car.
Even in my plane (little Cessna 172), taking off with full tanks vs. just what I need equals longer takeoff roll, poorer climb performance, and a landing that requires more runway due to the extra weight.
It’s safer to takeoff/land with less weight, generally speaking, vs. being overloaded. The more fuel they carry, the more they burn, the more expensive your tickets are.
@njovin:
Taking off with more or less weight has absolutely no bearing on safety, so long as the airplane is not over-gross and the pilot does proper planning.
@Pylon83: Even if it is just “bad piloting,” it’s peoples’ lives that are on the line.
when it comes to airplanes and fuel, you only have too much fuel if the plane is on fire.
@woot: I think there was an article here recently where pilots were ordered by their company to declare fuel emergency so they get to land quicker and keep to schedule, even if they had enough fuel for their alternate routes+45minutes.
ATC have to allow a pilot to land in higher priority when an emergency is called.
@Pylon83: Until they have an air traffic hold…but that never happens right? (Maybe not at 3,000 flt where the itty bitty prop plane inexperienced weekend jockeys fly)
@OsiUmenyiora: That is a good example, because not only is there pressure on them to take less fuel (even though variables in that particular day’s flight weather / routing/ and traffic require pilot modifications to what they feel is safe in THOSE conditions), but the Avianca pilots were obviously pressured (as many are) NOT to declare emergencies (because that opens all new cans of worms for management to freak over). Fortunately, most US pilots who have a union overseeing these situations, with safety committees who reiterate the right to pilot discretion in terms of safety, and corp shills are less likely to get away with intimidating them into not calling an emergency when it IS, and going by the FARs at MINIMUM
@MorrisseyTheCat:
Are you at pilot at all? I am not a low time “prop” pilot, and I also don’t work for a major airline or even fly for a living. While I don’t really feel the need to prove myself to you, I am a Certified Flight Instructor with Multi Engine and Instrument ratings. I have over 1000hrs in airplanes ranging from single engine piston to large turbine powered, pressurized airplanes. I know the FAR’s backwards and forwards, and there is nothing in there that says the airline can’t require the pilot to fly within their rules. If the pilot doesn’t want to comply with the airlines policies, so long as they are within the FARs, it’s the airline option to fire him/her (of course, the unions complicate this, but that’s another issue). No one is being asked to compromise on safety here, just that they fly within the fuel requirements set by the company. The FAA set a minimum that it decided was safe. That’s the baseline. If the company wants to operate at that baseline, so be it. The FAA has decided it is safe. No one is going to make the pilot fly with only a 45 minute reserve, but if he/she won’t, the company has every right to find someone who will. Delays happen, that’s why the 45 minute reserve is built in. With today’s modern ATC technology, delays can be forecast ahead of time and that is taken into account by dispatchers who assign the fuel loads. Safety is not being compromised simply because some overly conservative pilot wants to fly with a 2hr fuel reserve and the company says you only get 1hr. If the pilots don’t like their companies fuel policies, perhaps they should go work for another airline.
Just FYI, the people who decide the routes, fuel loads, alternate airports, etc are called Flight Dispatchers. Flight Dispatchers are licensed by the FAA, and are jointly (with the pilot) responsible for the safety of the flight. So if a plane runs out of fuel, the Dispatcher’s license is at risk too (of course that’s not as scary as the pilot’s life being at risk, but we can assume dispatchers don’t want people to die either).
My point is that this isn’t some accounting rep in Mumbai who is making fuel load decisions, it’s a highly trained expert on how much fuel, etc you need to get from point A to B without dying.
Pyln83
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Th F gvs th Plt n Cmmnd FLL thrty t dcd wht thy fl s sf f tht gs n xcss f th FRs bsd n thr ssssmnt f th CTL flght. Cmpny mngmnt dsn’t mk ths fnl dcsns, s t s nt thr lvs r lcns n th ln. Y (ps mn thy) cn g hd nd TRY t ntmdt thm nt cmprmsng sfty t sv bck, bt vn f y scd n trmntng thm, thr jb wll thr b rnsttd r thr bnk ccnt wll ncrs xpnntlly.
Wh crs, rght? By tht tm th nw mgt tm wll b n plc t rn th rln ndr sm mr, s t’s thr prblm, rght?
“We can’t dabble in the business policies or the personnel policies of an airline,”
um… isnt that exactly what the FAA does, dabble in airlines’ practices to ensure safety?
@pdizz:
No, the FAA’s job is to set standards and ensure they are followed. Until they get reports that the FAA standards are not being followed, they don’t and shouldn’t care.
Ya know, it really does not make sense to have to infer what MorrisseyTheCat was saying solely from Pylon83′s indignant (possibly justifiably so) response. If the moderator really wants to delete comments or ban commentors, so be it, but right now there is about a screens worth of wasted space on this page as well as a few replies that don’t make a lick of sense because of this vowel silliness.
And yep, sorry that this is off topic to the original article, but I think it is very relevant to the readability of the page as a whole.
@Riddar:
I disagree with the censoring of his post as well. While it was very pointed, I think he had a somewhat valid concern. I don’t mind being called out, especially when I’m making fairly technical judgments based on my personal experience and expertise. If we just took what everyone said at face value and didn’t question the validity and substance of their perspective, we all become lemmings and discussion goes nowhere.
Remember it is…. Destination + Alternative site + 45 minutes.
For a big jumbo flying into Memphis, the alternative site is another big airport (Nashville, Little Rock etc), it ain’t a semi-improved strip in rural Mississippi.
Besides being capable of handling the size of the plane AND (a BIG AND) the alternative landing sites are seperated by a distance such that unexpected severe weather at the original destination would not likely occur at the alternative destination at the same time.
@Pylon83: “I disagree with the censoring of his post as well. While it was very pointed, I think he had a somewhat valid concern. I don’t mind being called out, especially when I’m making fairly technical judgments based on my personal experience and expertise. If we just took what everyone said at face value and didn’t question the validity and substance of their perspective, we all become lemmings and discussion goes nowhere.”
Perhaps the only way to maintain a discussion will be to copy and paste the entirety of the text you are commenting to. That way even if the moderator feels the need semi-delete semi-neuter a post, the responses made will still make some form of sense.
And I will mention the moderator reading this commentno doubt with a cursor hovering over the ‘disemvowel’ button that I spent nearly ten minutes trying to find the original ‘We can now disemvowel you, lol’ post to make my comments there, but it seems to have been deleted for some reason. Hard to have discourse or conversation when it is not only heavily moderated but there is no public forum to discuss the moderation, no? And it is a shame, from what I can tell it removed from the page what might have been the only interesting and on topic back and forth conversation in the comments here. A high percentage of remaining contents seem to be questions repeated earlier questions, questions that were answered in the article or earlier comments, and not one but TWO posts whose sole contents are jokes about airliner fires.
@Corporate-Shill:
One must remember that an alternate is not always required. In some cases, it is simply destination + 45 minutes. An alternate is only required if, from 1hr before to 1hr after the expected arrival time the weather is forecast to be less than 3 mile visibility and 2000ft ceiling.
Aren’t all the new fees and baggage limit because of rising fuel costs? Didn’t the airlines claim these fees were the only way they could afford to keep enough fuel in the planes? So, they are taking in more money and skimping on fuel.
Great.
@seamer: A great boss would give you the company, and all the paper you want.
I was a labor lawyer for 12 years, and this is page one of the union playbook….go to the press and scare consumers. I dont know if its true or not , but I seriously doubt it. What does an airline have to gain by flying low on fuel? It sounds suspiciously like Union BS to me.
@jjason82: more fuel = more weight. More weight = less fuel efficiency. Like in a car. if you were to fill up your tank and then drive in a straight line you would travel a shorter distance than if you filled it 1/4 of the way 4 times. Of course you spend more time doing this.
I am an airline pilot.
As stated before we are required by law to carry enough fuel to reach a destination and an alternate plus 45 minutes. We also carry contingency fuel if in our judgment the situation will require more.
Even before considering the high price of fuel these calculations need to be carefully considered. Carrying more fuel means we won’t have to worry about coming close to running out, but we’ll also run into structural limitations on the airplane. For example “topping off” the tanks on a short flight means we won’t burn enough fuel to be under our landing weight. Therefore we’d have to circle or take a longer route just to be able to land. Or we could leave behind passengers and baggage to alleviate the weight issue; however, that’s not great customer service. Considering the cost of fuel we do try to fly in ways that conserve how much we burn. On the ground it is now common for airplanes to taxi with only one engine running. In the air we try to fly higher (where we burn less fuel), plan descents to be more fuel efficient, and get “shortcuts” that allow us to fly a shorter distance slower. My company culture strongly encourages these techniques.
That being said there is nothing to be gained by not loading enough fuel. Like a previous poster said our computers will alert us of the situation well before getting close to our destination. If it even came into question about being able to safely land with reserve fuel we would plan a fuel stop. Again this would cause a delay, and poor customer service, but if it has to be done it will be done, but this cost the airline way more than allowing pilots to load a proper amount of fuel to begin with.
At my airline I’ll never be questioned for declaring an emergency.
If there is a disagreement between pilots and dispatchers the more conservative side wins. Period.
Furthermore, I’m sitting right there with my passengers, and I want to get home to my family. I don’t know of a single pilot that would ever leave the gate without enough fuel because of “pressure” from the company. I assure you that will never happen on my plane.
I very much hope that somebody, somewhere, is taking this seriously.
I had a flight diverted from Houston to New Orleans for refueling last year, because it was quicker/safer to fly to NO, refuel and come back and land in Houston than wait and circle.
@Sudonum: Friction is a motha fucka
@nsv: @MorrisseyTheCat:
I see. I must have missed that post. Thanks for the clarification.
Cheers!
Ok, having just recently been on a flight that almost ran out of fuel, I have to disagree with everyone here that thinks this is a great idea. Because all of the calculations truly cannot take into account bad weather and airports that close. It was one of the scariest trips almost everyone on that plane had been on. Even the guy in front of me who had been a pilot for 30 years was a little shocked.
I understand the saving of fuel to increase profits, but I think the bottom line is that airlines need to increase fares and stop nickel and diming.
So the Grocery Shrink Ray has now hit the airlines?