The Working Party on Fuel Reserves for aircraft recommends that a major statistical attack should be made by a qualified body with the aid of an electronic computer on the problem of how to rationalize fuel reserves. I C.A.O's Standing Committee on Performance did much to standardize the risk of an aircraft hitting the ground on take-off and on landing, hence increasing profitability without prejudicing safety. Might not I.C.A.O. set up a committee to tackle fuel reserves on similar lines?

I think that even now, in advance of such a major undertaking, fuel reserves might be rationalized a little if certain information were available to flight planners and crews. For instance, Durst has given the accuracy of forecast mean equivalent head winds for a few routes (this Journal, 13, 288); if it were given for a wider selection of routes, perhaps the fuel reserve carried for ‘navigational error’ could be roughly specified as the extra fuel needed to cope with 95 per cent (say) of the errors expected in forecast M.E.H.W. The use of extra fuel enroute for other causes is much less frequent (on piston-engined aircraft anyway) and could generally be covered by change of destination or by use of fuel nominally carried for diversion.