Fuel Question

[simondix]

One for Dave really.

With the new client I had the following situation.

I am doing my TridentTR's. I flew to EGAA. There the fuel is cheaper than EGLL, and a lot cheaper for the next two flights. I tried to tank up on full tanks to cover myself as much as possible. I was going to top up at EGLL. The client showed I was 4000kg+ overweight and I had to make the choice to cut down on load or fuel. I cut down on fuel. I travelled with an empty central tank.

What should we do in similar situations?

[DaveB]

Hi Simon

I'll have to go and have a look at your flight but I've noticed the T3 is tight. I did LHR to Lisbon this afternoon and was surprised to see that with my fuel left onboard (6442kg) plus 7800kg for the flight, I was only a gnats you know what from being overweight. Lisbon isn't particularly far either at a little over 2hrs and 853.6nm. This means that flights to more far off places like Cyprus or the extreme of the T3's range.. Ben Gurion.. I fear we're either going to have to dispense with hold/diversion fuel.. cut back on pax or declare an emergency and plan a diversion. The T3 is taking nothing on cargo for any flight so there's nowt to be got rid of there!

What all this means is that we can no longer tank up and exceed MTOW as we've been able to in the past (unknowingly or not). The Trident will hold a lot more fuel than we can carry with a full complement of passengers (as will the majority of aircraft to be fair) and although the cargo capacity is listed as being in excess of 12k kg, the aircraft is at MZFW carrying 149 pax. It'll be interesting to see how a Cyprus/Israel run would go. Almost certainly, it'll be at a reduced pax level if the flight is to be done in one flight.

Bottom line.. you have enough tank up space available to get you to MTOW and that's it ;-)

EDIT..
Simon.. I'm back from Lisbon and have booked LHR to Tel Aviv to see what we get. Not that it needed checking but I've looked at the database info for the T3 and it's bang on. Up, up and away!!

ATB

DaveB :tab:

[DaveB]

Hi again Simon..

I've looked at this problem in some detail and found our longest Trident flights (Ben Gurion) cannot be done without sacrificing either a) pax or b) fuel reserves. I tried starting up the flight and with the maximum allowable fuel and 149pax, I was 1401kg short (estimated). Trying to keep 4000kg onboard meant sacrificing 43pax - 96 SOB (revenue $27264) and the fuel bill still came to $32156!!

Unfortunately, I don't have enough time to fine tune it now and will probably end up cancelling the flight but I'll work at it to see what is the best compromise. Another quick look for 96pax shows the flight CAN be done at a break-even leaving less than a 1000kg onboard and I for one am not happy with that. Damn.. work :@

Any thoughts John??

ATB

DaveB :tab:

[RAF_Quantum]

Hi Dave,

I would always go for keeping the fuel reserves and offload the pax. The outbound flight to LLBG should just make a very small profit, the return flight would make a loss due to the higher fuel cost. We may possibly have to increase the TF to get it to work in the black on the longer routes especially when we can't negotiate contract fuel prices at our airports of operation.

Regards

John

[simondix]

I did the flight to Kastrup and I left the central tank empty and had to take 252 kilos off each wing tank to accomodate the passengers. It does leave you paying for expensive fuel elsewhere. Alright while I am on TR's but implications later.

[DaveB]

Rgr that Simon and John ;-)

I can only imagine how gutted DM felt the other day (if he did the flight at x1) to end up in the red and Israel is a long flight to end up the same.. too far for me I'm afraid. Definately another case for a bit of TF massage me thinks ;-)

On a plus side.. the new client certainly keeps you on your toes and is much less click and go than it was. It's unfortunate that I don't have a day to calculate my fuel/pax loading

ATB

DaveB :tab:

[Nigel H-J]

Only a thought after reading this thread would it not be an idea for FSA to incorporate refuelling stop en-route for some destinations without having to dump pax?

Nigel.

[DaveB]

Hi Nigel

Well.. this was reality on a lot of flights as you know. How they'd include it in FSA is another matter. We have the ability to declare an emergency now and can use this as a form of tech stop though to be honest, it doesn't ring my bells. Since Simon brought up the subject of the Trident, a more fundamental problem has come to light in that we may have inadvertantly pushed the T3 beyond it's usual operating range.. the Ben Gurion run being one such route. Before the routes were amalgamated (during the BEA/BOAC formation into BA) the T2's had their own routes as did the T3's and the feeling now is that this run in particular is in fact an old T2 route. I know for a fact that all the long range testing I did for the FS8 T2 was to BG but noting that the T3 was higher density, shorter range it makes sense for the T3 NOT to go there.

Surprising what an innocent question can throw up ;-) The easiest answer may be to revisit the T3's route structure and make sure that any flights above a certain range are either left solely for the T2's or maybe removed where appropriate. We have a reasonably detailed idea of what Peter flew over his years on the T3 so it shouldn't be too difficult to weed out what shouldn't be there. ;-)

ATB

DaveB :tab:

[NigelC]

Hi Nigel

Well.. this was reality on a lot of flights as you know. How they'd include it in FSA is another matter. We have the ability to declare an emergency now and can use this as a form of tech stop though to be honest, it doesn't ring my bells. Since Simon brought up the subject of the Trident, a more fundamental problem has come to light in that we may have inadvertantly pushed the T3 beyond it's usual operating range.. the Ben Gurion run being one such route. Before the routes were amalgamated (during the BEA/BOAC formation into BA) the T2's had their own routes as did the T3's and the feeling now is that this run in particular is in fact an old T2 route. I know for a fact that all the long range testing I did for the FS8 T2 was to BG but noting that the T3 was higher density, shorter range it makes sense for the T3 NOT to go there.

Surprising what an innocent question can throw up ;-) The easiest answer may be to revisit the T3's route structure and make sure that any flights above a certain range are either left solely for the T2's or maybe removed where appropriate. We have a reasonably detailed idea of what Peter flew over his years on the T3 so it shouldn't be too difficult to weed out what shouldn't be there. ;-)

ATB

DaveB :tab:

Agreed.

If your "selling tickets" for a flight you cannot accomplish, then you need to change the equipment or not operate the flight.
Should it be a case of it's marginal in the prevailing met conditions on the day (runway perf, temp, upper winds etc) then maybe acceptable on say, a charter service, to consider a tech-stop for fuel, but on a scheduled service then it's a definite no-no to operate it on unsuitable equipment, you can't afford the level of schedule disruption it would bring.

Of course, you could do it by scheduling the tech-stop, i.e. a multi sector service, for example LHR-ATH-TLV.

When I was at BIA, we could send a 1-11 400srs to Tenerife from Gatwick, but it was payload limited to somewhere around 60-65 pax, and sold as such, and with this there was a high risk of tech-stop at Faro or Seville. Likewise the 500s were sent to Athens, went down there OK but on the return with prevailing westerly upper winds, 30 to 40% of the flights ended up in Brussels or Ostend for fuel. But these were IT charters, not scheduled service.

[DaveB]

Hi Nigel

Tks for that. Funny you mention the 400's as I had this very much in mind ;-)

We've been able to run the T3's to such far off distant places from the word go and in the early days, they made ludicrous amounts of money.. not least of all due to the database info being incorrect (we got full pax AND full cargo!!). This was later changed and brought the T3 more in line with norm but it's only with the advent of FSA that any route issues are coming to light. I suppose with the T2/T3, it's easy to 'miss' such falsities and I'm sure they won't be the last. Undoubtedly, we'll trip over them for other aircraft as the flights are booked and we find ourselves with no pax!

Agree entirely though. We shouldn't massage the ticket factor to operate an inappropriate aircraft.. only in circumstances to get the correct aircraft on the correct route to be profitable.. however meagre that profit might be ;-) The clues are out there as Sir David Frost used to say.. I just couldn't see the most obvious one ;-)

ATB

DaveB :tab: