First Mayday On Vatsim

[saksham Jain]

I was doing a flight between EFHK and ESSA. It was a short 40 minute flight, there was not much traffic and I was not even at my max takeoff weight ( I was flying the A319 btw with 130 passengers and barely any cargo) so I decided not to take any extra fuel.

I have attached the screenshot of the first page of my flight plan which shows the fuel. I loaded up 3000kg as indicated in the flight plan. As u can see it says to have 2800kg before departure and I did, shortly after departure I got a master caution saying I have low fuel which comes just above 2800kg of fuel so I surely had 2800kg at departure. 

 

I was approaching when I got a master caution again saying that I had low fuel and gave me some actions to perform which I did( attached a picture below). I did some calculation and realised I have about 35 minutes of fuel but I was very close to landing so I didn't declare a mayday but decided that if I have to go around, then I'll declare a mayday. Though I was almost certain that I'd have no reason to go around as the weather was great too but I stupidly forgot to reduce speed from 180knots as the approach controller had told me to maintain 180 till 6DME. Hence I went around and during the go around procedure I told the controller that I might have to declare a mayday and did some calculations again to be sure and declared a mayday. 

 

Im grateful for the ATC who did an EXCELLENT job bringing me in as soon as possible. AMAZING JOB. I told him I had around 20 mins of fuel. He slowed down an aircraft to squeeze me in for approach and I landed with 720kg of fuel.

This was a very interesting experience for me as it was my first time declaring a mayday. I again thank the ATC, the departure/arrival controller did an excellent job vectoring me in. We really do sometimes forget the importance of ATC but they are a reason why skies are so safe. 

[Joshua Jenkins]

As far as your fuel planning goes, I always recommended carrying a minimum of 10-15% contingency fuel and depending on the country you’re flying in you should typically have a legal minimum of 45mins of reserve fuel (in addition to the fuel needed to divert). You should never elect to carry less than this. Shed the payload if MTOW is an issue. 
 

Also, if you ever get to the point where you are at the amount of fuel needed to divert (alternate + final reserve), you should essentially be diverting immediately, especially if there’s any question about your ability to land at your planned destination right away (wx, traffic sequencing, etc.).

 

Edit: all things considered though, good job handling the situation once you realized it was an emergency.

Edited October 7, 2021 at 08:04 PM by Josh Jenk

[saksham Jain]

1 hour ago, Josh Jenk said:

As far as your fuel planning goes, I always recommended carrying a minimum of 10-15% contingency fuel and depending on the country you’re flying in you should typically have a legal minimum of 45mins of reserve fuel (in addition to the fuel needed to divert). You should never elect to carry less than this. Shed the payload if MTOW is an issue. 
 

Also, if you ever get to the point where you are at the amount of fuel needed to divert (alternate + final reserve), you should essentially be diverting immediately, especially if there’s any question about your ability to land at your planned destination right away (wx, traffic sequencing, etc.).

 

Edit: all things considered though, good job handling the situation once you realized it was an emergency.

Yes I do agree. I usually kept atleast 30 minutes if I see alot of traffic at my arrival but as I mentioned, there was barely any traffic today hence I did not take extra fuel. I will make sure to carry extra fuel after today's flight.

I also agree that one should divert if there is a question regarding arrival at destination but things seemed alright hence I continued. Maybe I should've informed the ATC about the developing fuel situation when the second master caution went off. 

[Simon Kelsey]

Sounds like you did a good job in recovering the sitaution - but as Josh says, the reason that you found yourself in this situation in the first place is that you departed with significantly less than the minimum legally required amount of fuel.

In EU-OPS land this consists of:

• Taxi fuel (including fuel for startup/APU usage if this is significant)
• Trip fuel (takeoff to touchdown)
• Contingency fuel (not less than 5% of the trip fuel or 5 minutes, whichever is greater)
• Alternate fuel (from your destination to your planned alternate)
• Final reserve fuel (30 minutes at 1500ft above the destination at the planned landing weight).
• Additional fuel (if required for, e.g. ETOPS)
• Extra fuel as required by the Commander

The total of the above is the minimum you should load for any flight - everything up to and including "additional fuel" is non-negotiable. The last line, "Extra fuel required by the Commander", might be 0 if you are not expecting any delay but could be lots in the event of widespread bad weather etc!

In terms of your in flight fuel management - again there are rules around this and "it seems alright" is not one of them! In summary, as Josh says, in most cases if you are touching down at your destination with any less than the final reserve fuel of 30 minutes + your alternate fuel, you are in a low fuel situation; there are some circumstances where you can elect to "commit" to your destination and burn in to your alternate fuel (for instance, if the destination has at least two independent runways available and the conditions are such that a safe landing with any plausible single failure of ground or airborne equipment could be made - e.g. a downgrade from CAT II/III to CAT I), but this should not be the norm!

If at any point it is apparent that a landing with less than 30 minutes of fuel may be made then a "PAN" call should be made to ATC stating the fuel remaining in minutes. As soon as it becomes apparent that the aircraft will land with less than 30 minutes of fuel remaining then a "MAYDAY" must be declared.

In any event, clearly the aim must be to avoid getting in to this situation in the first instance and an early decision to divert may pay dividends, especially where there is widespread disruption with many aircraft all trying to divert at once!

[saksham Jain]

1 hour ago, Simon Kelsey said:

Sounds like you did a good job in recovering the sitaution - but as Josh says, the reason that you found yourself in this situation in the first place is that you departed with significantly less than the minimum legally required amount of fuel.

In EU-OPS land this consists of:

• Taxi fuel (including fuel for startup/APU usage if this is significant)
• Trip fuel (takeoff to touchdown)
• Contingency fuel (not less than 5% of the trip fuel or 5 minutes, whichever is greater)
• Alternate fuel (from your destination to your planned alternate)
• Final reserve fuel (30 minutes at 1500ft above the destination at the planned landing weight).
• Additional fuel (if required for, e.g. ETOPS)
• Extra fuel as required by the Commander

The total of the above is the minimum you should load for any flight - everything up to and including "additional fuel" is non-negotiable. The last line, "Extra fuel required by the Commander", might be 0 if you are not expecting any delay but could be lots in the event of widespread bad weather etc!

In terms of your in flight fuel management - again there are rules around this and "it seems alright" is not one of them! In summary, as Josh says, in most cases if you are touching down at your destination with any less than the final reserve fuel of 30 minutes + your alternate fuel, you are in a low fuel situation; there are some circumstances where you can elect to "commit" to your destination and burn in to your alternate fuel (for instance, if the destination has at least two independent runways available and the conditions are such that a safe landing with any plausible single failure of ground or airborne equipment could be made - e.g. a downgrade from CAT II/III to CAT I), but this should not be the norm!

If at any point it is apparent that a landing with less than 30 minutes of fuel may be made then a "PAN" call should be made to ATC stating the fuel remaining in minutes. As soon as it becomes apparent that the aircraft will land with less than 30 minutes of fuel remaining then a "MAYDAY" must be declared.

In any event, clearly the aim must be to avoid getting in to this situation in the first instance and an early decision to divert may pay dividends, especially where there is widespread disruption with many aircraft all trying to divert at once!

Yes sir, I agree. I should've kept much more fuel than I had and will surely keep that in mind. 

This definitely has been a learning experience for me. I don't know why it never occurred to me to declare a panpan. The second master caution I got was a definite pan pan situation. I think I couldn't handled the situation better in few places. 

[Joshua Jenkins]

At the end of the day we’re all here to firstly have fun and secondly to learn. So good job handling the situation once you were into it and now you know how to prevent that same situation happening again 😄

 

Cheers!

[saksham Jain]

1 hour ago, Josh Jenk said:

At the end of the day we’re all here to firstly have fun and secondly to learn. So good job handling the situation once you were into it and now you know how to prevent that same situation happening again 😄

 

Cheers!

It sure was an experience that I've learned from. And as you said, at the end of the day we're all here to firstly have fun and secondly learn😌😃

[Tobias Dammers]

Additional note from a different perspective: remember that we're not actually flying real aircraft here, so the degree of realism wrt fuel planning is largely up to you. If you don't care for realistic fuel calculations, you can just load up with obscene amounts of extra fuel - as long as you don't exceed MLW, you'll be fine. You can also make use of the "magical in-air refuelling service" - not all sims/aircraft models allow this, but if you can manipulate fuel-on-board in flight, or set your aircraft to not burn any fuel at all, that's also allowed.

If you do want to simulate fuel burn, then you may also want to keep in mind that the simulation isn't 100% accurate on all fronts - fuel burn is notoriously difficult to simulate, and on top of that, the in-sim weather may not agree with what your planning software gives you, so you may need larger margins than you would for a real flight.

[saksham Jain]

3 hours ago, Tobias Dammers said:

Additional note from a different perspective: remember that we're not actually flying real aircraft here, so the degree of realism wrt fuel planning is largely up to you. If you don't care for realistic fuel calculations, you can just load up with obscene amounts of extra fuel - as long as you don't exceed MLW, you'll be fine. You can also make use of the "magical in-air refuelling service" - not all sims/aircraft models allow this, but if you can manipulate fuel-on-board in flight, or set your aircraft to not burn any fuel at all, that's also allowed.

If you do want to simulate fuel burn, then you may also want to keep in mind that the simulation isn't 100% accurate on all fronts - fuel burn is notoriously difficult to simulate, and on top of that, the in-sim weather may not agree with what your planning software gives you, so you may need larger margins than you would for a real flight.

I prefer doing things realistically. May it be the standard operating procedures or even the fuel quantity. Hence I would keep the correct amount of fuel, though I do understand your point and ofcourse the"  magical in-air refuelling service" is always there.😀