B737 Undifferentiated or Other Model
Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP)
Flight Crew Total 29500; Flight Crew Type 17000
Confusion; Situational Awareness; Workload
Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural FAR; Inflight Event / Encounter Fuel Issue
General None Reported / Taken
Chart Or Publication; Procedure; Company Policy
I am compelled to file this report as I believe some of the procedures we are adapting are counter productive and hope that a review will yield positive changes.There are 2 issues at hand that I wish to bring to your attention. The first one concerns landing fuel at an island destination. The company is applying contingency landing fuel limits and without a confirmed landing alternate to single runway airports and it is my opinion this is unsafe. The company has chosen to use 45 minute reserve for landing fuel and without an alternate. They have instead added an extra 35 minutes for ferry fuel. For many of us who fly the Caribbean this landing fuel is normally not a problem because of our experience and situational awareness; but for those who do not fly in these areas this can become a problem for some of the following reasons.Traffic to the caribbean destinations has increased dramatically over the last 10 years. Often; we will not get our assigned altitude and generally the one that is assigned is lower thus cutting into our fuel supply. I would estimate an extra 1;000lbs per 2000 feet of altitude burn for this type of situation. In addition due traffic into ZZZ quite often we will hold up to 30 minutes due volume into the airport. These situations are dynamic and are not as predictable as we have in the US. So you can see things can go bad quickly down here.  Not listing an alternate will only compound the confusion for pilots unfamiliar in the region. If the pilot needs to divert; having an alternate will eliminate looking for an airport that is suitable and will also identify that it is a preferred airport by the company......plus fuel has been considered. I had this conversation with the dispatcher and there was considerable push back. We should be standard in our thought process so as to maintain a level of safety. We should NOT have ferry fuel and we should have an alternate listed for pilots who may not be familiar and we should add more fuel for these destinations.My second issue is replacing the estimated times over waypoints with the howgozit times.  While the howgozit times eliminate the addition mistakes of adding up time segments; it dilutes the importance of the master flight plan and adds another error to the mix.  In addition; (this pertains to the B-737 fleet) if ATC assigns a different mach number and dispatch is unable to make the change and transmit those changes to the flight crew; now the howgozit will be inaccurate. It is my opinion maintaining all information on the master flight plan in the long run is the most efficient method with the least amount of hazards by keeping the data centralized. We specifically stress one master document......but can have multiple howgozits........it does not make sense to me.  Again this is fleet specific......there are fuel planning issues that have not yet been resolved. Howgozit is generally indicating more [fuel] by considerable amounts than what we actually land with; the flight plan by far is generally more accurate. Just another reason to keep the information on the master flight plan. Using 2 sources that do not ever match up and one of them is generally incorrect is a hazard we should mitigate right now by simply using one or the other until they do match.
A B737 Captain reported concern over his company's dispatch procedure for Caribbean Island flights related to fuel and estimated time over waypoints.