Light Transport
Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP)
Situational Awareness; Workload; Distraction
ATC Issue All Types; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy; Inflight Event / Encounter Fuel Issue
Flight Crew Landed in Emergency Condition
Human Factors; Weather
After arriving at our cruising altitude we received our first reroute from Toronto center on at FL360. This clearance was only a partial clearance; and I did not accept it due to it not being a complete clearance. I told the controller we needed a complete clearance or he needed to give us a holding clearance. After that he responded with; 'you can't take (EFC) clearances'; 'expect the rest of the clearance from the next guy'; 'Ive never heard of that'. The clearance he gave us was from YQO to VHP with no other fix. I told him we needed a complete full route clearance so we know what to do in case of lost communications. He then issued us YQO; VHP; direct ORD.  That situation seemed to solve itself by us not accepting the partial clearance.  We then received two more re-routes to ORD and ended up holding over WEEVR intersection. Prior to hitting our BINGO fuel we were further given a clearance of direct VHP SPI PNT TRTLL2 ORD. This clearance was unacceptable as we didn't anywhere close to the amount of fuel needed to accept the route. As this is all happening the dispatcher is communicating the position of the weather very well to us using familiar fix's on ORD arrivals as well as where new cells were 'blowing up'...this was incredibly helpful as the weather review the First Officer and I had done prior to this flight as well as the vantage point we had during the hold which allowed us to scan what seemed like the entire upper Midwest with our aircraft's radar showed that the storms where building in front of the strong cold front.  During all of this discussion the release was amended to show MKE as our new alternate. This was a very good choice as at that time MKE was behind the line of weather and the cold front was almost completely moved through the area. Further discussion between myself and the First Officer was that should a diversion happen we decided to only go to any airport that would allow us to descend behind the line of weather (on the west side); and also be west of the front. We agreed and planned for a diversion to MKE. This decision was also communicated to dispatch. Our dispatcher was very helpful during this phase of the flight; providing very timely communication about the weather and responding to a lot of ACARS text messages. After requesting ATC to see if they could further cut our route; they stuck to the (VHP SPI PNT TRTLL2 ORD) route. I then notified ATC we would be changing our destination to MKE. ATC then responded very quickly to question this choice. ATC suggested IND; and CVG. Although those airports were somewhat geographically closer; they were on the wrong side of the front; line of thunderstorms; and not what this crew (including dispatch) had planned for. At this point we are now getting to a situation where we will not be able to land in MKE with 45 mins of fuel. Due to this as well as what seems like ATC's inability to address our fuel concern; I elected to declare [minimum] fuel; and stated we would need to head to MKE.While en route to MKE; ATC asked us if we would be able to accept going to ORD. I said we would but we would need priority to land; and no further delays. We then amended the release again via ACARS to show ORD as our destination. It then seemed as though ATC wanted us to cancel our status. They asked us twice for this; and were very unusual requests. Due to our fuel level at the time of those requests we would not have been able to attempt a landing in ORD; go missed; then attempt a landing in MKE; go missed; and still have anything close to 45 mins of fuel with the weather and amount of traffic going into ORD and MKE at that time.  I made it clear were not going to cancel our status and we continued to fly a visual approach to runway 28C; with a normal landing. We landed with 2700lbs of fuel.
After several reroutes and holding; the crew declared minimum fuel but were able to land at their original destination of ORD instead of diverting.