American Airlines warned Monday that delays in delivering kerosene could hamper operations such as those of firefighters fighting fires, and urged its pilots to limit their fuel consumption accordingly.
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“Use all available fuel-saving strategies when possible,”
wrote flight operations manager John Dudley in a message to pilots.
"Each liter of kerosene saved is useful,"
he added in this memo consulted by AFP. The problem, he explains, is mainly linked to logistics: lack of drivers, lack of trucks, and in some cases, problems with allocations in the pipelines.
“All airlines continue to experience fuel delivery delays at several small and medium-sized airports
,
”
says the flight operations manager for American. These delays not only affect areas in the west of the country but are now observed throughout the United States. And they should last until mid-August.
The problem
"affects not only airports and airlines, but also efforts to fight the large wildfires on the West Coast,"
notes John Dudley.
Several officials of the State of Nevada, including Governor Steve Sisolak, had already expressed concern on Saturday in a statement of
"possible fuel shortages that could delay the flights of freighters and passengers at the Reno-Tahoe International Airport in the days to come ”
.
Rapid return of passengers
These difficulties are added to the concerns of understaffing encountered by some companies faced with the rapid return of passengers to planes after the air gap linked to Covid-19.
"The dominant problem is that kerosene has lost space in the pipeline networks in favor of gasoline and diesel over the past year due to the pandemic,"
said the company Delta, calling on them. various actors concerned to resolve this situation.
She assured in a message to AFP to have immediately taken
"extraordinary measures"
so that its operations in Reno are not affected.
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Pilots will sometimes have to fly with more kerosene than usual when heading to a destination where fuel is lacking, a spokesperson for the pilots' union of American Airlines, Dennis Tajer, told AFP. To keep the same weight, planes may have to fly with fewer passengers, he warned.
