How Much Fuel the Aeroplane Needs?

Have you ever wondered what is the airplane fuel used in? From a small jet plane to a big airbus, aero planes need aviation fuel to operate.

We will analyze the way pilots estimate how much fuel they need for their flight. Imagine that the aero plane has to fly from Warsaw to Vilnius while choosing the airport in Riga as an alternate airport.

Let’s analyze the situation by types of fuel the aircraft needs to successfully complete the flight, Aero plane fuel is divided into:

• TRIP
• CONTINGENCY
• ALTERNATE
• FINAL RESERVE
• EXTRA
• TAXI FUEL

Trip

First of all, trip fuel is needed to take off, climb, cruise, descend, approach and land. In brief, it is the fuel needed to fly from point A to B.

CONTINGENCY

Secondly, contingency fuel is needed in case the weather or wind changes and the aero plane has to navigate around or the air controller does not give the permission to fly into the requested flight level and has to stay in the lower level which leads to consume more fuel.

Contingency fuel has to makeup either 5% of the trip fuel or a minimum of 5 extra minutes which is mandatory by law.

ALTERNATE

Now imagine that while approaching the airport we are rejected from landing on the runway as another aero plane is blocking the way due to technical issues.

That means the aero plane will have to go around without being able to land at our destination and that is the moment when we need alternate fuel to land at an alternate airport which we have chosen during our briefing.

FINAL RESERVE

While approaching Riga airport, we get information that we cannot land either as runway inspection cars have just broken down.

As we have used up all the trip fuel, contingency fuel, and alternate fuel, we are left with final reserve fuel the amount of which is regulated by law and must make up a minimum of 30 minutes’ flying time and 1500 feet over the airport holding speed.

The time of those 30 minutes is needed to clear the runway and we will be the first for approach as we have declared fuel emergency as soon as we started using the final reserve fuel.

EXTRA

Pilots also have an option of adding extra fuel for situations when aircraft would be holding or doing long transitions as the flight might be affected by either the pilots’ unfamiliarity with a particular airport or its rush hours.

TAXI

Last but not least, we need taxi fuel which gets us from the gate position to the runway, fuels the auxiliary power unit for air conditioning and starting the engine.

Also, we can add even more taxi fuel, especially during winter, when the plane needs de-icing which extends our consumption of taxi fuel.