Originally Posted by TillerTemptress

So call and get more fuel if you're doing LAX to SFO and the weather sucks in SFO. Or .. any high arrival volume time to SEA though really if you're doing S turns and you don't have the gas, tell them. Or go somewhere and shut both down, and you'll be burning all of 300 an hour on the APU. But I don't know why you'd leave the gate with less fuel than you want.... you're the one signing the release.

Originally Posted by FlytheSky

I never leave the gate with less fuel than planned. And if it looks like I'm going to, I'll call the fueler back out. And as I mentioned, I always single engine taxi (unless the FOM specifically says not to). And 95% of the time there's no problem with the fuel plan in the real world. It's that 5% that can sometimes be a pain (and usually I'm terrible at guessing when it'll happen). I've had plenty of times when I thought there might be a delay and instead we get a shortcut and we land 800 lbs above planned.

Keep in mind that ever since I became the one signing for the release on flights I've operated, I've never landed below minimum fuel (or even terribly close to it). I'm one of those guys that if we're anything below planned my mind immediately starts forming plan B in case things go further outside of "planned" and it's difficult to bore my FO to death with stories when I'm coming up with that plan B.

My philosophy is that the dispatcher also shares joint responsibility for the flight and if things start looking dicey, I'll talk to them about other things, and if we divert, we divert (that's never happened to me either, at least for lack of fuel). And hypothetically, if I did divert for lack of fuel and for whatever reason some investigation was made into why we diverted for lack of fuel, I'd fully expect to have a dispatcher who is using good historical data about the fuel loads for that flight (that theu have access to that I don't) for why they planned the fuel the way they did.

My point is that if you are able to save some fuel at the gate by not running the APU the moment you set foot on the airplane (assuming there's ground power and the cabin is a comfortable temperature) I like to hold off on starting the APU until about D-15 or so. Otherwise, light that baby up! And if it's already running when I set foot on the plane after the last crew, I'm going to leave it running. No way I'm risking it not starting when I try to start it after shutting it down. Then the flight gets delayed and I look like an idiot. Not sure which one is worse.

Originally Posted by VIRotate

*Cough* UND and Riddle.

Originally Posted by PanchoBarnes

Damn I haven’t had time to read all these APU posts in full, but I’ll say I run that bish.

Passenger and crew comfort is key!! I tell the fa “I’m not stingy with the APU, I’ll fire it up as soon as it’s slightly warm”

I run it. I single engine taxi. Haven’t had the APU cause a fuel issue. Even if you’re a little below planned on takeoff it’s no big deal.
If you’re close to min there’s probably something other than running the APU for 30minutes that got you there (maybe stingy amount of total fuel).

Plus we are usually over fueled by 200lbs

Originally Posted by PressOff

Gotta love 5 leg days that have absolutely nothing but quick turns that allow no time for the crew to get food. Guess who's taking a flight ops delay for that tomorrow?