Originally Posted by
fly2nrt
Complete BS.
Runway construction at JFK? Weather at JFK? No problems landing 777's all day long but some bump-kiss A321 can't handle it? Wether was fine all day except for a quick afternoon shower. If they're going to make up excuses at least make them plausible.
The fact that 777's were landing and the "weather was fine" has nothing to do with fuel planning. If the cloud ceiling is forecast to be below 2000 feet above the field, or visibility less than 3 miles, alternate fuel is required. Add the fact they are probably metering arrivals into JFK, because they always do, and a runway is closed, they add fuel on top of that. All of the reasons given by the OP are totally plausible. No conspiracy.
This reminds me of a time I was on ANA JFK-NRT and the aircraft had to do a go around. The captain came on and told us this was due to being a "little heavy" for landing. Right... he was heavy for landing after burning fuel for 14 hours. No he had to do a go around because he screwed up the approach. (There's nothing even wrong with that!)
Of course it's possible to be too heavy after a 14 hour flight. Fuel burn calculations are done to a T and they probably took off at the maximum possible weight in order to land at maximum landing weight in JFK. But since the flight is 14 hours long, it's quite easy for the forecast winds aloft or weather to change slightly and the fuel burn was better than planned. Therefore they were slightly heavy on approach and decided to go around. They easily burned another 1 or 2 thousand pounds to circle around, which would be within landing weights. No conspiracy.