Quote:
Originally Posted by Titan
Thanks. So to taxi it takes almost no thrust I assume?
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Depends on the type but almost none; the majority of the time waiting for deice is just spent sitting in line waiting at idle thrust anyway, ideally with one engine shut down.
At Calgary's international gates the planes just spray at the gate before starting up which eliminates all of this, except for the 3 or 4 pound per minute burn of the APU. The downside of this is that the gates remain occupied for longer, and the entire apron becomes a glycol swamp as opposed to only the central deice area.
Even though it's not a ton of fuel burned at idle, they have a minimum fuel on their flight plan that they're allowed to line up on the runway with... United mainline in particular has a +/- 75 gallon tolerance on the fuel requests they send so even if the fueler anticipates a big lineup out there there's not a lot he can do to save having to come back. Captains of other companies are known to request half a ton of "black market fuel" from the fueler that the dispatcher probably wouldn't have agreed to.