Yep, especially right after the MD11 came out. I try to keep things realistic, including having my reserve fuel amounts. So if I dip below those requirements, I would land.
Not an issue now, though. Fuel planning gets easier the more you do it
what’s your way of planning fuel? because i use fuelplanner . c o m and it didn’t work for 747-4 EGLL - KLAX…i full the tank…the highest amount of fuel and i had the land and refuel…
Soo don’t use fuelplanner then lel. You probably had a headwind and to much cargo
Last week when the ATC was in southern America, I changed the route and number of my Lufthansa flight in order to keep it ‘real’ so I could divert 😉
I do it by hand now.
Sometimes I will use SimBrief.com.
If you use SimBrief, you have to add custom planes. For some reason Infinite’s flights MTOW, MLW, fuel capacity and GPH are different from real world numbers, so you’ll need to go in and make the custom airframe for what you’re using
If I haven’t flown the aircraft in IF yet, I’ll fill the tanks and next to no payload and bring it up to a good cruise level and take a fuel reading then bring it back down. That way I have a rough idea of what the fuel burn will be through the flight and prevent any surprises, like the crazy high fuel burn on the older aircraft in IF. Then for the first flight I’ll take the calculated fuel required based on the applicable regulations for the operator (ICAO, US Flag, US Domestic, etc) and add one hour of extra fuel for insurance on top of what is required for fuel reserve, contingency, alternate and so on. From there, I track fuel usage on each flight, compare it to the PLOG and adjust the fuel bias as needed. It will usually settle on a number after 2 or 3 flights, but I track fuel burn on every flight I do. Never know when a sneaky update changes something.
A simple example, I flew a B752 from CYHZ to BIKF a little bit ago and landed with 9060kg of fuel. Planned arrival fuel was 8928kg. Just 132kg over what was planned on a four hour flight of which most was burned on taxi. Perfect.
I always put 2-3 hours fuel extra. So if your flight would be 13 hours long. You should take a minimum of 15h fuel in the Weight & Balance menu.
It happened to me when I just started flying, I climbed to FL410 in a 747 90% loaded. I realized that my plane was not level so I flew with flaps 2.
I had to make an emergency landing and I never made this mistake again. (Stepclimbing)
I’ve found that! Especially with the A380, the fuel burn in IF is much lower than Simbrief’s default
I agree, i always have way too extra fuel left when i land at the destination
Literally yesterday I was flying from Cape Town (FACT) to Frankfurt (EDDF) when it said I had 2 hours of fuel 3 hours before landing. I landed ate Zurich, then redeparted.
This would never happen to an expert pilot such as @schyllberg
speaking from experiance: when you forget LNAV, and circle the north pole for 6 hours, ice bergs are a god send…
Are you implying you ran into an iceberg while circling?
No, I landed on one, refueled, and deverted to Russia…
You landed on an iceberg 🤨 how did you manage that??
Most certainly not. Especially during an official event where i was the host.
A big iceberg, and thw fact that it was above the terain data
I get the sense you did @schyllberg…
I have had similar fuel issues while flying Quantas flight 9 with the 787-9 the flight wont make it when flying what I saw as realistic after even checking the Quantas flight for seats taken at the time when I started my flight to get a proper load. I had 250 passengers and only about 25% of the full amount of proper cargo and loaded the fuel as far as I could for the near 18 hr flight and said I had an estimate of 14 hrs of flight remaining.