737-400 fuel consumption

[Pete5 0]

I was doing a flight from Toronto Pearson intl to Ottawa MacDonald–Cartier International Airport it said the expected fuel burn was 1800 liters, I put in 5000 and I ran out of fuel just before landing??? it makes no scene in the taxi I used almost 500 liters!

[minimums retard 0]

How did you calculate expected fuel burn? When asking a question, make sure you provide enough information so that people can actually help troubleshoot your issue. I've never heard of fuel for larger planes being measured in litres before, I was under the impression they used kg's or lbs.

[pschlute 37]

 

 

it said the expected fuel burn was 1800 liters

 

"it" said 1800 litres ?  What is it ?

 

1800 litres is about 3250 lbs. Simbrief suggests 5,000 lbs for fuel burn only. To that you need to add taxi and reserves/minimum landing fuel. You dont want to landing with less than 5000 lbs on board. So you should have been loading with a minimum of 10,000 lbs.

 

You said you loaded 5000 litres which is about 9000 lbs so you should have arrived safely. Are you sure you didnt load 5000 lbs ?

[Pete5 0]

How did you calculate expected fuel burn? When asking a question, make sure you provide enough information so that people can actually help troubleshoot your issue. I've never heard of fuel for larger planes being measured in litres before, I was under the impression they used kg's or lbs.

 

"it" said 1800 litres ?  What is it ?

 

1800 litres is about 3250 lbs. Simbrief suggests 5,000 lbs for fuel burn only. To that you need to add taxi and reserves/minimum landing fuel. You dont want to landing with less than 5000 lbs on board. So you should have been loading with a minimum of 10,000 lbs.

 

You said you loaded 5000 litres which is about 9000 lbs so you should have arrived safely. Are you sure you didnt load 5000 lbs ?

I was using the navigation log in the fs9 program in flight planner http://imgur.com/W15uANQ

[pschlute 37]

I dont think that is accurate. Simbrief does a good fuel estimate, or you could search for a 737-400 calculator.

[mcgoldri 0]

I have had similar problems with the POSKY 744.  When creating a flight, I go through each step (i.e., selecting an altitude and seeing what the "fuel calculator" indicates what is required.  BTW, I always add more fuel (say an additional 10%).  I take off and then fly 70-80% of the flight distance and then the low fuel light on my panel starts blinking.  Checking the "range remaining" is less than what remains of the flight.  While I dont like doing it, I do an "inflight refueling" to ensure that I can complete the flight ...

 

I don't have this problem with other POSKY, SSP, and/or TDS aircraft, only the 744.

[minimums retard 0]

I was using the navigation log in the fs9 program in flight planner http://imgur.com/W15uANQ

 

I dont think that is accurate. Simbrief does a good fuel estimate, or you could search for a 737-400 calculator.

 

 

It's definitely not accurate. The default FS Flight Planner is not recommendable, and in any case if you had checked your values by hand using the correct fuel burn values you wouldn't have run into that problem. I think the best thing you can do right now is to do some research on flight planning and real world procedures, you will never run into these problems again, whether you're using software or not. 

 

 

I have had similar problems with the POSKY 744.  When creating a flight, I go through each step (i.e., selecting an altitude and seeing what the "fuel calculator" indicates what is required.  BTW, I always add more fuel (say an additional 10%).  I take off and then fly 70-80% of the flight distance and then the low fuel light on my panel starts blinking.  Checking the "range remaining" is less than what remains of the flight.  While I dont like doing it, I do an "inflight refueling" to ensure that I can complete the flight ...

 

I don't have this problem with other POSKY, SSP, and/or TDS aircraft, only the 744.

 

Check the fuel burn values in the aircraft.cfg, then use that for your planning (or edit them if they are wrong), and calculate it manually - see if the same thing happens. You don't need to adjust fuel burn for climb or descent, as when you climb you gain potential energy which is regained during descent, effectively cancelling each other out. However you will need to add taxi and contingency fuel, and I like to calculate a base reserve of 5% of my route fuel burn on top of that too.

 

Good luck, hope you guys get it resolved.