sinanju

Yup. Akin to:

What employees say: Traffic made me late for work
What bosses hear: I failed to account for traffic when deciding when to leave for work

Thumper

I guess this is what I was driving at.

After a couple of million miles, I know the "glamour of travel". Was the diversion mitigated by an unwillingness to have additional fuel for the weather?

They knew the unusual situation, could they have been better prepared for it?

FWAAA

Your flight took off about 55 minutes after scheduled departure time, so you sat on the ground for at least half (maybe almost 2/3) of the expected arrival delay. So far so good.

If you learned of the diversion at about two hours into the flight, then that notification came at about the same time as the conclusion of the roughly 200 miles of holding pattern your flight experienced between Richmond and Norfolk. Your flight did two complete large ovals of about 100 miles each. No doubt that detour was intended to burn off the rest of the expected delay into LGA Undoubtedly, the pilots then learned of additional holding pattern flight that would be required and they made the decision to divert to BDL.

http://flightaware.com/live/flight/A...755Z/KMIA/KBDL

The "airline" didn't choose to send you with minimal fuel. Your captain made the final call on how much fuel he or she felt was appropriate. And quite obviously, they had more than enough fuel to fly almost 300 miles beyond the planned routing (200 of that in the Virginia Ovals and another 100 beyond LGA to BDL).

We have no idea how long the flight might have had to fly in the holding pattern that the pilots rejected (when they chose to divert). Might have been 15 minutes or it might have been two hours. Should the captain have ordered enough fuel for an extra 200-500-750 miles of holding pattern on top of the 200 miles already flown? IMO, if the answer is "yes," then that's an unreasonable expectation.

They didn't gamble. The captain ordered up what he or she thought would be sufficient fuel given the weather and LGA delay information they had while on the ground in MIA. And consistent with the FAA regulations, your flight had enough fuel to fly an extra 200 miles over southern Virginia and then still had enough fuel to fly an extra 100 miles beyond LGA to BDL. I'm certain that the plane landed with enough fuel onboard for even more flying time, but your captain made what they decided was a prudent decision to not enter what may have been an indefinite holding pattern over NYC during bad weather.

We don't have enough information to know whether the captain screwed up. Instead, there's merely a conclusion that they knew about bad weather and still didn't load enough fuel to avoid a fuel-related diversion. For me, that's second-guessing without enough data. Diversions for additional fuel aren't prima facie evidence of a lack of preparation by the pilots. In commercial aviation, diversions for fuel during bad weather happen.

YMMV.

hillrider

We're doing the impossible.

If my flight is cancelled because a mechanical, and there are no spare airplanes around, is that an AA "technical failure" for failing to have enough spare aircraft?

Yes, they make business decisions all the time; they are all probabilistic.

What you're implying is that you don't like AA's overfueling (or lack thereof) decision-making, but you (or your boss or your company's travel management company) would probably pick DL if it was $10 cheaper. There is no clear-cut answer, I am afraid.

As somebody already mentioned, a diversion is extremely expensive for AA. It's not that they say "oh well" -- they do try to actively minimize them, but not to the extent where at the margin that the cost of minimization (to them) is higher than the cost of the diversion itself. Of course, they probably don't care about the costs to you, so from a social perspective it's probably not optimized, but in a competitive environment where a $10 difference in fare matters, there's nothing that AA can do about it.

Thumper

Thanks for the detailed response. Makes sense and I learned from it.

ijgordon

Sorry to go OT, but....so you missed the best part of the trip?!? Presumably you'd been to Macchu Pichu before, otherwise why fly to CUZ only to board the train to Puno right away? And when we did this, the train from Cusco left relatively early in the morning, how could you have even planned to fly in from LIM same-day (a 5am flight perhaps?). Maybe YOU should have planned better.

FWIW, the Andean Explorer train ride was in my top 10 (maybe top 5) travel experiences. And Titicaca was beautiful.

brp

Yeah, Macchu Pichu was a previous trip, and was amazing.

This trip was a definite risk, and I knew it from the start. We had 2, maybe 3 LIM-CUZ flights that would have worked. The last would have left 30 minutes to get from the airport to the train station. As we had only carry-on, very doable. Certainly not a good plan. While I think that they screwed up the morning as well, I don't blame them for that. It was a risk, and we lost. We didn't have more time, so better planning wasn't an option.

The later flight taking us to the other end, though, the royally fudged, IMO.

We will book that trip again and allow more time, an extra day at Cusco to avoid this.

Thanks for rubbing in what we missed

Cheers.

mvoight

Why not simply fly to Puno?

ijgordon

It seems brp was trying to fly to Puno (JUL is near Puno), after the Cusco flight delay and return to Lima, but LAN "royally fudged" that flight.
Probably for the best - just go back one day and do both the train and Puno/Titicaca.

FXEpilot77

A couple of minor corrections, the amount of fuel is determined by dispatch, not by the captain, but the captain still must sign off on it and accept it. He/she can still choose to reject it and add more. In the TWA days, the captain adding extra fuel was never questioned, from what I understand at AA, its heavily frowned upon and discouraged, for the cost reasons stated above.

As to point earlier about why captains were adding so much fuel awhile back, this was usually do to "commuter cruising", in other words flying faster for the purposes of making it home when you live somewhere other than your base. That of course uses a lot of extra fuel and costs a lot more than normal cruise speeds, but its certainly nice as a passenger.

Domestically, the legal minimum required fuel is based on being able to fly to the destination, execute a missed approach, fly to the filed alternate, shoot an approach there, and land with 45 minutes of fuel remaining.

Of course, the dispatcher's job is also to try to predict these scenarios and add fuel accordingly. Besides the cost issues for AA, a diversion creates extra work for dispatch, so they have a vested interest in avoiding it when its foreseeable, and they are the ones planning fuel.

MiamiFlyer

Wasteful is a touchy word. Every pilot I've known feels more comfortable with more fuel and more runway, and considering their primary goal is getting everyone there safely, I'm fine with that. Having been in a cockpit when a diversion occurred, it gets real hectic and very intense quickly, especially if you are getting low on fuel and/or have serious equipment issues.

Ideally, pilots will become flight deck managers, skilled in both flying and managing the flight economics....but always putting safety first. The trick will be how to encourage that attitude. I believe the pilots could save AA eight or nine figures annually if they really wanted to, and if they somehow benefited from it as well. However, the reward has to be based on individual performance, or else some will not be motivated.

JDiver

It's an old pilot adage that there's nothing as worthless as the sky above you, the runway behind you and the fuel on the ground. Pilots are by nature conservative folks (I'm obviously not speaking in a political sense necessarily)- they hate it when things occur out of their control, they are trained for masses of contingency and though some non-pilots actually believe automation makes things easier and pilots no longer fly (a canard if there ever was one), there is now more that can go wrong and pilots are ultimately responsible for what happens to the souls aboard their aircraft.

FAA required fuel is conservative - unless you have to run the APU for a long time, have to taxi here and there (wind direction changes) and wait for your takeoff spot, get indirect routings due to congestion and weather, arrive at their destination only to have to put in significant hold time... and they still have fuel to make their alternate(s) and sufficient fuel to do a missed approach because an aircraft got out of sequence. Suddenly, it's barely enough.

You could never carry all the fuel required for every contingency - and it costs money and altitude, fuel efficiency, etc.and make a pilot truly happy.

viking737

Adding fuel at AA is neither frowned upon nor discouraged if the captain requests additional fuel after the dispatcher has determined the initial required fuel load.
I have been an AA captain since 1992, and not once have I been questioned if I requested additional fuel above the flight planned amount.

JDiver

I do understand the economics and the desire of the airline to tanker as little fuel as is possible within FARs and conditions dictate, but the day "groundpounders" - as skilled as they might be - begin questioning Captains and First Officers about stuff like that we are in trouble.

Thanks for adding your insight as an AA pilot.

T/BE20/G

I chose this post to quote simply because it deals with several aspects of reserve fuel, though this is really more of a general clarification on how fuel planning works. For background, I am an airline pilot, though I won't be an American Airlines pilot until after the merger closes in a couple of weeks...

While you are correct that FAA rules require 45 minutes of extra fuel on domestic flights, the whole number involves more than that. Rather than simply being (fuel burn to destination)+(45 minutes), the requirement actually considers weather and other factors that vary from flight to flight. We start with fuel to the destination, add in fuel to shoot an approach at the destination, then fuel to fly to the farthest alternate required and shoot an approach, then add in the extra 45 minutes. While this is what's strictly required, in practice, we also add fuel for known/expected en route delays. This aspect of the fuel is that part that is up for discussion between the captain and the dispatcher. The dispatcher actually does all of the fuel planning; the captain then either agrees to the dispatcher's plan, or calls to discuss making adjustments to it.

In a situation like this, They would certainly have added extra fuel for potential holding, as the 45 minute reserve is not intended to be used. In other words, when we're holding, we're not planning to use that 45 minute reserve; rather, we are planning to leave the hold with enough fuel to continue the flight to the destination, then to the alternate, then to still have a 45 minute reserve. On the flight in question, the two turns in the hold were not using the reserve fuel, they were using fuel that was loaded to allow for an en route delay. When it becomes evident that we aren't going to be able to continue to the destination with enough fuel to then go to the alternate and still have a 45 minute reserve, we let ATC know that. Sometimes, they are able to then allow that aircraft priority handling to the destination and the passengers may never know we were about to divert; other times, the airport simply can't take us yet and we head to an alternate.

The reason you see such high arrival fuels is not wastefulness or lack of concern. Rather, it's because a lot of flights are intentionally dispatched with well over the 45 minute reserve, with no intention of truly using that fuel. The FAA has very conservative requirements for when we need to include alternate airports. Even though we can land most planes with a ceiling as low as 50 feet, we are required to list an alternate airport anytime weather is forecast to be less than a 1000' ceiling or 3 miles of visibility for a 2-hour window around our planned arrival time. This means that the vast majority of the time that an alternate (and the corresponding additional fuel) is required, the flight lands uneventfully at the destination airport, with all of the added fuel increasing the arrival fuel average. Because of this, the average arrival fuel will never come all the way down to 45 minutes.

Ultimately, the flight didn't divert because they used up their 45 minute reserve. Rather, it diverted because they either used (or were given an extended hold that would have caused them to use) their planned holding/en route delay fuel, and had to divert to ensure that they would still have the 45 minute reserve available when they arrived at BDL, just in case anything went wrong there. Even with perfect weather at the alternate, you never know when something random will cause added delays or runway/airport closures, and you would never want to plan to arrive at any airport, even the furthest alternate, with just enough fuel to have one shot at a successful approach.