I understand Monday’s QF933 BNE-PER (738) declared a mayday due to fuel.
Any of our pilots care to comment on weather or other known factors?
It’s another stupidity of Australian aviation. The rest of the world understands what “minimum fuel” means, and does not require declaration of an emergency, unless you’re in danger of flying a glider. If anything, this system adds to the danger, as many will be reluctant to declare an emergency, whilst they may have been quite happy to state “min fuel”. It also devalues the term “mayday”, and now it’s simply a version of the “excuse me” that you might use in a Coles queue. Are we seriously going to have the full airport emergency response, for an aircraft that proceeds to land with above the minimum reserves.
CASA is part of the problem here, as it allows airlines to have fuel policies that lead to the carriage of a bare minimum. Even worse, is the fact that airline management uses fuel ‘not carried’ as a goal for awarding bonuses. Not to the pilots who do the flying, but to the management that applies pressure to carry the minimum.
I realise the general trend of delays at present are predominantly related to ground factors such as staffing etc. however, would you consider uploading a bit extra in the current environment to allow for delays getting a slot?
I always found Australia to be one of the least reliable places when I came to use the crystal ball to order fuel. ATC would, almost as a matter of course, want more holding than you’d been advised or planned for. But the question is always how much extra. I recall once, when Sydney wanted 20 minutes of holding, that I had an extra 30 or so (which may have come from the variable fuel, not from ordering extra). After going around in circles for the better part of 50 minutes, we asked how much longer, and got an answer that made me think they thought the aircraft ran on air. We declared minimum fuel, and told them that we’d be leaving the holding point at the next crossing. Their response was to ask what our latest divert time was…and it had gone 30 odd minutes ago. Before changing frequencies we heard two other aircraft tell them or less the same thing, and that they’d be following us.
The upshot of all this is that the aircraft concerned almost certainly left with the holding fuel that Perth required. In flight, ATC decided that they wanted more holding than the aircraft could give them (and I’ll consider the dog leg to be part of the holding, as looks to be designed to cost about 10 minutes). The crew took the only option available to them by declaring an emergency, and landed above the minimum. To my mind the ”wrongdoing” was at the ATC end, in requiring more holding than they had advised.
