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
Somewhat related story, when I was a kid flying back from Hong Kong to America apparently there was something wrong with our plane and we ended up flying circles around Japan in order to “release” fuel into the sky or whatever. The reasoning being was that so if anything happens and we crashed there wouldn’t be a big explosion or something. I can’t remember much details and tbh this is just from what my parents told me, I was a very young kid when this happened. However we did land safely and there was fire trucks everywhere.
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.
Wild Nagasaki bomber landing
> Bockscar flew on to Okinawa, arriving with only sufficient fuel for a single approach. Sweeney tried repeatedly to contact the control tower for landing clearance, but received no answer. He could see heavy air traffic landing and taking off from Yontan Airfield. Firing off every flare on board to alert the field to his emergency landing, the Bockscar came in fast, landing at 230 km/h (140 mph) instead of the normal 190 kilometers per hour (120 mph). The number two engine died from fuel starvation as he began the final approach. Touching down on only three engines midway down the landing strip, Bockscar bounced up into the air again for about 7.6 meters (25 ft) before slamming back down hard. The heavy B-29 slewed left and towards a row of parked B-24 bombers before the pilots managed to regain control. Its reversible propellers were insufficient to slow the aircraft adequately, and with both pilots standing on the brakes, Bockscar made a swerving 90-degree turn at the end of the runway to avoid running off it. A second engine died from fuel exhaustion before the plane came to a stop.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki
As per regulatory requirements you do need to have something called final reserve which is 30minuts holding 1500ft above destination aerodrome. This fuel cannot be used in normal operations nor cannot be planned to be used. This is your last resort if shit hit the fan and absolutely everything goes wrong.
This fuel is quite critical. If you just *expect* you will land below final reservers you need to report it to air traffic controllers (with mayday call). Appropriate action would be to land asap at the nearest suitable airport to refuel. An investigation might be opened.
Here is an example: https://avherald.com/h?article=454af355
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