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
When cars breakdown, it sucks to be stuck there but its generally not immediately fatal, and certainly not to hundreds of people all at once. Think about how many thousands of flights run everyday and how absurdly rare it is to hear about crashes, errors, or mechanical issues in flight. As an industry, they have to be basically perfect.
Having hundreds of thousands of workers, keeping everyone on the same page and virtually GUARANTEEING that thousands and thousands of flights will take off and land requires strict adherence to very thorough rules. In the case of fuel, its really pretty simple. You MUST have enough every flight. That means it gets tracked, planned for and still have a buffer so that 1 in 10,000 chance everything goes wrong, you still have enough. To have enough means to have:
1. taxi to takeoff
2. takeoff
3. get to climb
4. cruise to destination
5. descend to destination
6. land
7. taxi
8. Some extra amount to account for long queue, unexpected headwind, unexpected diversion/travel around bad weather,etc.
9. EMERGENCY RESERVE.
Every flight will use 1 -7. Some flights will dip into 8, this is typical and expected. 9 means something happened, went wrong, or someone screwed up. You should not touch 9. It’s there if you need it, clearly that’s its intended purpose, but using 9 means someone needs to figure out why you used 9, whose fault is it, and that means paperwork and review by supervisors and FAA.
So its not that they would be in trouble, its more just documenting why you’d have to touch the emergency supply.
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