How do airlinds refuel on short hops?
Posted by DisturbingMicrobe@reddit | aviation | View on Reddit | 6 comments
Hi, I was wondering how airlines typically refuel when doing short hops. Specifically, I am interested in Edelweiss' ZRH-Kilimanjaro, Kili-Zanzibar, Zanzibar-ZRH roundtrip. I heared that especially Zanzibar and maybe also Kilimanjaro are relatively small airports with limited fuel. So my question is, does the aircraft take fuel for the full trip to Zanzibar, where it refuels for the home trip, or does it refuel in Kilimanjaro for the full home trip incl. Kil-Zan (this would put a A350 that is used over its MLW tough). Or is it refuelled half in Kili and filled up at Zan? Thanks for an explanation!
fly-guy@reddit
Limited fuel isn't no fuel and contracts are in place to guarantee fuel delivery. However, where they exactly fuel is depending on a lot of things. I fly a lot of these kinds of routes (different airline) and we (almost) never carry more fuel than required for the first stretch. So we fuel at each stop and take enough for the next stretch.
Also flights are most of the time not completely loaded to the max weight, there often is "space" for more fuel if needed.
DisturbingMicrobe@reddit (OP)
Thank you for your reply, that makes sense actually. So the short hop between Kili and Zan would be refuelled only for this short hop then (~ 5T plus reserves) and then in Zan the big refuelling (~50T) would happen?
fly-guy@reddit
There are exceptions of course, but this is the general plan.
yyz_barista@reddit
At my airline, we consider where fuel is available and then take fuel accordingly. The stations where we operate have no public fuel available, but our company has made fuel arrangements so we should have fuel available, unless the equipment is broken.
If there's no fuel at 1 of the stops, we'll have to uplift fuel from the previous station to ensure we can get somewhere (and go to the alternate). The crews will normally take a little bit extra as well to be safe.
On some flights, the passenger and cargo loads are light enough so they can take return fuel from our base, which the crews prefer. If there's MTOW and MLW restrictions, we have to consider that when determining how much fuel they can take based on the expected payload.
The other consideration is sometimes we need to add a fuel stop due to the routing. In which case, that's added either before / after the station without fuel, again depending on where we're MTOW/MLW limited.
airport-codes@reddit
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DisturbingMicrobe@reddit (OP)
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