Originally Posted by saxman66

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.

Originally Posted by saxman66

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.