Why do airlines have a minimum fuel on landing requirements?

Question

This may not apply to all airlines, or apply to today’s world, but I was watching a video on Britannia 226A crash from 1999. In the video, they mentioned that the pilots were under pressure to land, so they wouldn’t have to explain to their bosses why they landed with less than the minimum amount of fuel required.

If a plane takes off, has to abandon a landing attempt, or complete an extra go around, or has to stay in a holding pattern, or has to divert… but they land safely without incident nor issue, why would that be an issue? What else could the pilots do?

Edit to add the answer (thank you for all of the replies, everyone! I misunderstood entirely what the video was attempting to convey): There are aviation safety boards with strict rules and landing with low fuel is grounds for a report and an investigation into the flight, so the safety boards can find the root cause for why the flight did not have an adequate amount of fuel on landing. The pilots may get into trouble if the investigation finds they were at fault, but it is more geared towards safety and attributing a root cause for the issue to make a low fuel event less likely in the future.

In: 707

Answer 1

Flight is relatively stress-free, but takeoff and landing can be hairy in adverse conditions or with a lot of traffic.

So they want to ensure that the plane has a certain amount of fuel left when it arrives at its destination in case they have to circle around for a while waiting for their turn to land, or waiting for a safe time to land. Or even worse, a plane might have to do a “go-around”: Aborting the landing when they’re almost on the ground, having to throttle way back up and lift off again to go around for another try.

I’m not an aviation expert, but it sounds to me like the pilots prioritized things very wrongly.

They should have prioritized a safe landing, whereby they could explain to management that they needed to dip into their fuel reserves to ensure a safe landing. But instead they took a risk landing at a time when they shouldn’t have.