B737-800
Other / Unknown
Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural MEL / CDL
General Flight Cancelled / Delayed
Company Policy; Equipment / Tooling; Aircraft
MEL was added in KOA after flight was already released.  Upon pulling new flight plan to add MEL and reflect that continuous APU burn statement and applicable fuel were reflected; the new flight plan showed the words 'APU continuous ops flight plan' yet did not show the required additional fuel burn.  Several minutes went by with many people looking into what the problem was and finally Mr. X was called and he had to take action from his house; which is all too common.  It was earlier suggested that a reference flight plan be pulled using a different tail number with same MEL and in that reference flight plan we saw the correct added fuel (411 lbs).  I suggested pulling yet another reference flight plan with a different tail number to compare.  The additional fuel was also 411 lbs.  I added 1000 lbs delay fuel with concurrence of the captain to know that we should have sufficient fuel.  It was then decided that because Mr. X was heading home to access his own computer to 'fix' today's problem that it was best to wait until the fix before letting the aircraft blast off.  The flight was already showing an -out- time as my message telling them to hold didn't reach the crew in time according to them. (I also called KOA ops to have them hold the flight).  Once the problem was fixed I was able to pull the correct flight plan with proper verbiage and fuel burn (421 lbs); have the agents deliver paperwork to the crew and be on our way.
An air carrier Dispatcher laments a buggy flight plan program that his company uses that can only be repaired by one individual.