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
Going into the final reserve means a lot of paperwork and explaining, avoiding that is preferable. It would probably would go into an investigation on the decision making of the pilot leading upto the event as the 30min is not supposed to be touched, and associated stress and headache of an official investigation. And nowadays aircraft upload all flight data via phone connection automatically right after landing. So HQ probably know already before you arrive at the gate. The data is analyzed automatically and for certain events (landing below reserve fuel is one of them) key management automatically get a text/email.
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