On Thu, 17 Oct 2024 17:09:34 +0100
Post by DavidI can speak from experience.
The plane I was due to fly on was delayed due to the late arrival of
another flight. The flight crew on the delayed flight were scheduled
to crew my flight.
However, by the time we were able to take off, if the crew had
continued to the ultimate destination, they would have exceeded their
hours.
So the airline arranged for the aircraft to land at a intermediate
point where they would do a crew change.
But in order to land at the intermediate point, if they had had their
original load of fuel on board, they would have exceeded their
landing weight.
So they had to offload a certain amount of fuel before we could
take-off. The offloaded fuel was then waste (or more probably went
for recycling)- it could not be used on another flight.
Jeez! When I returned from Cape Town, while Apartheid was still in
force, meaning South African Airways flights had to avoid most of
mainland Africa when flying to Europe, we landed at Windhoek to let all
the soldiers off for the Angolan War. Then we refuelled for the long
flight to London, but after waiting for ages at the start of the
runway, we returned to the terminal, as "the wind had changed in our
favour and we were able to offload unnecessary fuel". That must have
gone to waste, then. To top it off (!), after again sitting at the start
of the runway, we returned again to the terminal to load up with fuel,
"as the winds had again shifted". Somebody must have had a busy credit
card that evening.
After all that, we couldn't get to London, we had to stop at Munich in
order to have enough fuel to get to Heathrow.
The whole flight, from Cape Town to London, took 23 hours, and we
never left the aircraft.
--
Davey.