He's not a particularly good pilot, and flying-wise he's known for not carrying enough fuel. He apparently feels that saving the company fuel will make them more tolerant of his other escapades. I'm afraid he's probably correct in that evaluation. His most notable short-of-fuel situation came about six months ago when he landed at JFK from Tel Aviv with only 9700 pounds of fuel. He got in trouble with the FAA for that one. We are absolutely never supposed to land with less than 15000 pounds. 9700 pounds put him down to about twenty minutes worth. 30000 pounds is our normal minimum target for landing.

I talked to the f.o. on the flight. How accurately I now remember a conversation that took place 20 years ago is certainly open to question, but as I recall his telling of it, the situation would have been worse had not the f.o. took it upon himself to communicate to ATC the need for no delay in landing, but without actually declaring a fuel emergency. Apparently during the flight—it was the captain's leg—things had happened that had used more fuel than he planned, and both the f.o. and the f.e. were seriously concerned and had told the captain that they would be landing with less than minimum fuel. Then, as luck would have it, JFK changed runways while they were on the approach. When the f.o. and the f.e. told the captain they thought an extended approach could possibly run them out, he wouldn't answer them. At that point, the f.o. picked up the mic and told ATC that they needed to continue to proceed straight to the airport to avoid a critical fuel situation, and ATC let them continue without changing runways.

I had a leg a week ago with him that illustrates his fuel attitude and how it can cause problems. We were operating from Las Vegas to JFK with Philadelphia as an alternate, and I was flying the leg. The weather in JFK was forecast to be right at minimums or below. Most captains would, in that situation, load extra fuel for contingencies. He didn't, taking only the minimum legal fuel.

A number of things started chipping away at our fuel: the usual west-to-east tailwind was not as strong as forecast, and passing Cleveland, ATC ordered us lower than normal for traffic. Lower means more fuel burn, and then we got thrown into a hold about fifty miles east of JFK because of the weather-caused traffic jam there. That put us into a situation where we would have enough fuel for one approach to JFK and, if that didn't get us in, would have to proceed immediately to Philadelphia, where the weather was, fortunately, very good.

Then the fun really started. When I pulled back the power for the descent for the approach, the number three engine's thrust lever wouldn't come back past about 50% of available thrust. The choice then became whether to shut down the engine or live with all that unwanted thrust. All three of us, myself plus the captain and the flight engineer, agreed that under the present conditions, it was better to leave it running, but that involved extra fuel burn, asymmetrical thrust, and speed control problems.

Interestingly, he let me continue to fly the airplane, and I appreciated that. It's the challenges that make it fun. Most captains would have taken the airplane any time there's trouble.

Flying an approach, especially at a high traffic airport like JFK, involves a number of power changes. I elected to leave the #3 thrust lever where it was, thinking that if I used it when I needed more thrust it might stick at a higher thrust than it already was. So, when more power was needed, I'd bring up #2 to match #3. That took care of the asymmetrical problem. Any additional power requirement I handled by bring up #1 and #4.

Things were going well until the guy in front of us slowed drastically. That put us in the situation of having to put out a lot of flaps to match his speed, and that of course meant a lot more power, a lot more fuel. We could not, though, risk having to go around if he didn't have time to clear the runway before our arrival at the threshold since we didn't have sufficient fuel to come back around for another approach at JFK and then continue to Philly if the second approach was unsuccessful, a definite possibility since the weather was so bad.

Anyway, we got down on the runway. I had the flight engineer cut off the fuel to #3 as soon as we touched down, and used only #1 and #4 for reverse to avoid asymmetry problems. All in all, I had a lot of fun, but it would have been much nicer if we had had sufficient fuel to alleviate that worry.