Flight Planning and Fuel Management
Core concepts
Flight planning begins with the operational flight plan: route, levels, alternates, and a fuel figure built from taxi, trip, contingency, alternate and final reserve. For a Brunei-registered CPL candidate, understand that contingency fuel is a percentage of trip fuel (commonly 5%) unless a different policy is approved, and final reserve is a fixed endurance figure expressed in time. Reserve fuel is protected: it is not available for commercial replanning without a documented in-flight decision.
Traps in questions
Distinguish trip fuel from block fuel. A question may give endurance in hours and fuel flow in kg/h - convert consistently. Watch for questions that add alternate fuel twice, or that treat holding fuel as part of final reserve. Another trap is the difference between a destination alternate and an en-route alternate, and when an alternate is legally required at all.
Worked example
Aircraft burns 800 kg/h. Trip time 2 h 30 min, taxi 12 min, contingency 5% of trip, alternate 25 min, final reserve 30 min. Trip fuel = 2000 kg. Contingency = 100 kg. Taxi = 160 kg. Alternate = 333 kg. Final reserve = 400 kg. Minimum block fuel ≈ 2993 kg. Round up and compare with tank capacity and maximum landing mass at destination.
Rule of thumb
Convert every time to minutes, compute fuel per minute once, then multiply - it removes most arithmetic errors under exam pressure.
Operational discipline
Fuel management continues in flight: monitor against plan at each waypoint, record actual burn, and act early on a negative trend rather than at the destination.