Newsstand - Indian pilot forgets to load enough fuel for his flight

Link (http://www.gadling.com/2009/01/07/indian-pilot-forgets-to-load-enough-fuel-for-his-flight/)
by Scott Carmichael

...Apparently, the captain of Kingfisher flight IT335 was preparing for his Mumbai to Delhi flight, but failed to check his fuel loads. Of course, when you do this in your car, you get a "ping" and an orange light comes on, but on a fully loaded jet, things are a little more complicated.

To make matters worse, the jet encountered poor visibility upon its approach to Indira Ghandi Airport and the captain was not certified for those conditions.

Eventually, the plane managed to reach the airport, presumably running on fumes with a pilot not trained or certified for the weather conditions...

And in fluent English.

http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?newsid=1219150

Once he reached Delhi, he was ninth in the landing queue. By now, the plane was dangerously low on fuel with just a few kilolitres left in the tank. A crisis was averted only after the pilot asked the ATC to allow him to jump the queue.

In the news report, I don't see anything about "failed to check his fuel loads" or "forgets to load enough fuel".

In fact, I see "The flight left Mumbai at 7:45pm with enough additional fuel to not only reach its scheduled destination of New Delhi by 9:30pm but with enough supply for a diversion to Jaipur or Lucknow -- the immediate alternative airports"

"Forgot to load enough fuel" and "used up much of the on-board reserve in diverting and had to request an immediate approach to avoid an emergency situation" are two very different situation.

He is doing the same as every other airline is doing in order to reduce fuel consumption..... They are carrying a lighter load an if the wait due to weather is too long then trouble may arise sooner than it did before the high oil prices came about. Now many of you will be saying but oil is soo much cheaper now - well the airlines are still having to recoup those high prices from the last year and the lower seat sales this year - so save they will no matter where.

This business about not being cleared for certain situations is nothing new - however airlines need new excuses for delays or disruptions since the old excuses are being grabed by courts all over the world and airlines are told to pay up to inconvieniced passengers. However if it has something directly to do with the safety of passengers well then courts do have a hard time prooving airlines did anything other than deal in the passengers best interests.

He diverted and then changed his mind:According to a source, minutes before landing, the air traffic control (ATC) at Delhi airport informed the pilot that visibility had dropped to Cat-III conditions, which meant the pilot would not be able to see beyond 100 metres. The source said Khan sought a landing at Jaipur, but permission was denied due to lack of parking space. Khan then decided to divert the flight to Lucknow as he had already consumed a lot of fuel hovering over Delhi.

When Khan was halfway to Lucknow, which is 55 minutes of all-weather flying time away, the Delhi ATC informed him that the fog had lifted and he could return, the source said.

The aircraft had consumed nearly 45% of its additional fuel by this time, the source said. Instead of opting to land at Lucknow, refuel, and fly back to Delhi, Khan decided to head back to the capital.

Once he reached Delhi, he was ninth in the landing queue. By now, the plane was dangerously low on fuel with just a few kilolitres left in the tank. A crisis was averted only after the pilot asked the ATC to allow him to jump the queue.