The Guardian is reporting a five-fold increase in the number of low fuel warnings made by pilots of Continental Airlines' flights arriving from Europe into Newark. According to the paper, the Department of Transportation (DOT) has released a report saying that Continental pilots made 96 "minimum fuel declarations" last year. A statement by New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez, one of senators who received the report, says that in some cases flights approached Newark so close to empty that they received priority landing clearance, effectively allowing them to jump the line to avoid running out of fuel.

To make sense of the DOT report, which can be found in its entirety found here (.pdf), you need to understand the difference between a minimum fuel declaration and an emergency fuel declaration. In the latter, a pilot is so worried about his fuel level that he requests a priority landing slot. A minimum fuel declaration, on the other hand, means that there isn't a problem yet, but one could develop if the flight experiences any unforeseen delays.

The FAA requires that an aircraft have enough fuel to travel 45 minutes beyond its scheduled arrival airport. Of 20 Continental flights randomly sampled, the FAA found all of them in compliance with this rule – on average they had 64 minutes of fuel remaining.

The DOT report offers several possible reasons for the increase in fuel declaration incidents. One is Continental Airlines' desire to save fuel. Several employee bulletins dug up by the FAA show that Continental management was concerned by the number of fuel stops pilots were making on international flights into Newark, at one point going so far as to connect the costs of unnecessary refueling with profit sharing and pension funding.

The FAA also questions the practice of flying Boeing 757s on longer overseas routes. Traditionally the 757 is used on domestic medium-haul routes, but in recent years has been pushed into international service. The 757 has been a cornerstone of Continental's international expansion – the airline uses the planes to funnel traffic from medium sized

European cities like Belfast, Cologne, and Hamburg into its big hub at

Newark.

But on some of these European routes, the 757, with a range of 3,900 nautical miles, cuts it a little close. Barcelona is 3,398 nautical miles from Newark. Throw weather and holding patterns into the mix, and you're not leaving much room for error. Perhaps not coincidentally, Barcelona-Newark is one of the routes where the FAA found that pilots most often made fuel declarations.

Continental insists that it doesn't cut corners when it comes to aircraft safety. The airline says its planes are always loaded up with ample fuel prior to takeoff and that pilots are free to make refueling stops whenever necessary.

The report is troubling, perhaps even more so for those who remember Avianca flight 52, which crashed while landing at Kennedy Airport in 1990 after running out of fuel.

Photo: Continental Airlines