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
The “minimum fuel” is there for emergencies. If you’re burning into it, that implies you had an emergency. Emergencies should be documented and explained so that they can be avoided in the future. It’s less about the pilots being “in trouble” (unless it was their fault) and more about just trying to make sure we understand what happened and avoid it in the future.
If there were no consequences for consuming your emergency fuel, you’d see airlines putting less fuel in planes, or pilots getting sloppy in their planning, because they know they have the 30 minute buffer to hide their crimes/errors, and we’d see more situations of *real* emergencies where that 30 minute buffer no longer helps them get out of it.
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