Found on youtube. “Minimum fuel” is a specific US term. It looks like this guy played this card very conservatively here. Anyway, personally, I would like to have lots of fuel when flying in potential low IFR conditions. Especially if that’s flying on the US west coast, where there is a GA accessible IFR airport every 10 or so miles. And even more so when flying (as it seems) just two-up, so no W&B issues either…
To his defence, this apparently was his second approach already, after being made to go around by ATC on the first one…
boscomantico wrote:
“Minimum fuel” is a specific US term.
We also use it in France.
But is it an official and normed phrase according to the radiotelephony manual?
boscomantico wrote:
But is it an official and normed phrase according to the radiotelephony manual?
I just checked and the “minimum fuel” is ICAO phraseology. It was implemented in the 4th amendment of Doc 4444 on the november 15th 2012.
The “minimum fuel” expression will be part of SERA Part C.
But until SERA Part C comes in force, it’s up to each country to implement this phraseology.
In France, this incident triggered the implementation of the “minimum fuel” expression.
boscomantico wrote:
But is it an official and normed phrase according to the radiotelephony manual?
This was introduced by ICAO some five years ago. I quote from the regulation:
4.3.7.2.2 The pilot-in-command shall advise ATC of a minimum fuel state by declaring MINIMUM FUEL when, having committed to land at a specific aerodrome, the pilot calculates that any change to the existing clearance to that aerodrome may result in landing with less than planned finalreserve fuel.
Note 1.— The declaration of MINIMUM FUEL informs ATC that all planned aerodrome options have been reduced to a specific aerodrome of intended landing and any change to the existing clearance may result in landing with less than planned final reserve fuel. This is not an emergency situation but an indication that an emergency situation is possible should any additional delay occur.
(If you want to google the whole document, which also contains fuel related MAYDAY calls, this is it: ICAO State Letter SP 59/4.1-11/8 )
Thanks. Interesting. In particular that incident report. Interesting also the last bit, where it says that the DGAC considered that: “The minimum fuel callout is a source of confusion. This callout does not lead to any action by ATC, so the crew must then declare a distress situation as soon as the quantity of fuel planned for the landing is lower than the final reserve“.
The thing is… when you are flying to your alternate, and you don’t have fuel to mess around, you are in a mayday situation, and the only Q is whether you formally declare it or not.
I would imagine it would help ATC to know that if they do X (e.g. put you in a hold) then the consequence will be a mayday call.
Whenever you are heading to your alternate then it is a mayday situation – well, unless it isn’t because you have tons of fuel and a big enough bottle to pee into 
Interesting post thanks Guillaume for the link. I fly in and out of annemasse a lot and I truly believe that the use of French on the Unicom will cause an accident one day. Just last month we were approaching the field after having descended on the ILS at LSGG, I was with a friend who is also an instructor but not a French speaker. Two other aircraft were in the pattern and the turboprop Cessna was spiraling down after having dropped parachuters, all speaking French. Frankly chaotic.
Not sure there’s anything that can be done but the language factor can be a significant one as highlighted in the report.
boscomantico wrote:
Interesting also the last bit, where it says that the DGAC considered that: “The minimum fuel callout is a source of confusion. This callout does not lead to any action by ATC, so the crew must then declare a distress situation as soon as the quantity of fuel planned for the landing is lower than the final reserve“.
That is why ICAO reacted. The ICAO action dates from 2012, the incident was in 2010.
In the incident, they actually had more fuel than the calculated final reserve, which admittedly is a very low figure allowing for one go around and one approach and landing without any margin. In commercial airline flying, the reserves are generally not too large, mostly consisting of the said Final Reserve, Alternate (or holding fuel if no alternate necessary) fuel and what ever remains of the route reserve. In practice, any diversion started at a point where only alternate fuel and partial enroute reserve are left over will bring the outcome close to a landing with little above FR.
For GA purposes, flying that tight is usually not very comfortable nor safe. In private GA we also don’t have the constraints that carrying excess fuel means a lot of extra cost (some airliners use up to 25% of the fuel quantity they carry excess to actually carry it) so we can and imho should be a bit more conservative.
For my operation, I have defined the final reserve (for the lack of a better parameter) as 45’ at 65% cruise speed. In my case, that is around 30 liters. For planning purposes, I do not want to land below that value. At my destination, I’d want that FR plus Alternate Fuel, or at least 90 minutes all together whichever is more.
Mooney_Driver wrote:
For GA purposes, flying that tight is usually not very comfortable nor safe.
It would be interesting to see what JasonC’s fuel planning looks like with his aircraft being considerably faster than a single piston aircraft.
