B777 Undifferentiated or Other Model
Workload; Communication Breakdown
Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural FAR; Inflight Event / Encounter Fuel Issue
Flight Crew Became Reoriented
Human Factors; Company Policy
Was 2nd observer seat relief pilot on flight. A release 2 was printed prior to our arrival at jet however I was unaware of this until crew change enroute; when notified by Dispatch we needed to drop our alternate in order to redispatch. At that point I looked at messages and saw we had been given release 2 with an alternate and 4000 pounds of additional gas. No notification by dispatch on acars or by ramp telling us we had new fuel load. I believe the flying first officer assumed the new release was for a zero fuel weight increase only.
Left operations with Release 1 with no ALT after re dispatch.While preflighting received an ACARS from Dispatch: Release 2 SENT FOR ZFW INCREASED; along with a partial flight plan with new numbers.We checked and verified ZFW increase.Dispatch did NOT inform us of:1) ZZZZ added as an ALT along with adding 14.9 fuel2) Min takeoff fuel increase 3) Fuel on board increasedThe Captain was never asked to agree; nor did he sign for Release 2.At departure time we were delayed due to off loading bags for misconnects diverting our attention as we were concerned with going over our duty time. We experienced extensive taxi delays due to RWY configuration increasing our taxi time from 25 mins planned to 47 mins. We were concerned with having Minimum Takeoff Fuel but were looking at Release 1 numbers of 253. To conserve fuel we shut down #2 engine. Of course that is when we received clearance to line up and wait on the RWY. Following SOPs we did the crossbleed start checklist; start #2 eng; ran the after start checklist and the before takeoff checklist; then line up. We did have Minimum Takeoff Fuel for our original Release 1; but not for Release 2.Contributing factors:1) FATIGUE- you start the flight late body clock time and our delay made it worse.2) New ACARS data loading procedures occur at a very busy time as you enter them and verify right at push.3) Flight plans sent via ACARS printers are very hard to read due to different formatting.4) Expectation bias of seeing a new Release 2 due to ZFW increase and 9.9 times out of 10 fueling onboard is not increased.5) We know that Dispatch was busy due to ACARS failure previously in the day.Any deviation of company SOP or FAR was strictly unintentional.
B777 First Officers report not detecting that a revised release contains an alternate airport and an increase in fuel. This is not detected until the redispatch point where Dispatch deletes the alternate to allow a legal re release. The many factors involved in the omission are discussed.