Narrative:

While conducting our flight our fuel supply fell short of what was planned. We experienced no delays that would explain the shortage. We took off with fuel well above the minimum required and while in cruise realized it would be necessary to drop our planned alternate airport to land with legal fuel reserve. There was a head wind. I don't know if it was greater then the wind used to calculate the burn. We flew at FL200 instead of planned FL220. However; not even accounting for the additional fuel to climb to FL220 the difference in cruise burn was only 58 pounds; this is an insignificant difference. The fuel calculations were wrong.what is most disturbing is that my first officer remarked that he had experienced this before at least a few times and other coworkers I have spoken with have also experienced the same thing. This has happened to me before with the fuel being short to even a much greater extent. On another recent flight we had an even greater margin of fuel reserve above the minimum required on the release. We experienced no delays that would account for the shortage. In fact our alternate was our departure airport so when we learned that we would not be able to land at our destination due to weather we were already closer to our alternate then if we would have had to go all the way to the destination airport and then go to the alternate. Our required 45 minute burn after reaching our farthest alternate was recently raised by the company to a higher amount and we did not even have enough for the previous required fuel reserve. There were thunderstorms that developed between us and our alternate that should have been taken into consideration and obviously were not. We changed our alternate to an airport which was very close and landed there.I was questioned a few days later by my chief pilot and did not tell him about the shortage. I believe that; based on past experience; if I had discussed it with him all possible efforts would be made to somehow twist the scenario into making this my fault. I was fatigued due to the very long work days that we experienced and was being rushed to try and get the flight out on time and we had weight and balance issues. Otherwise I may have had the time and foresight to take more fuel even though it was not required by the release.I believe that fuel planning is being intentionally manipulated to allow more passengers and bags on the aircraft. I have personally seen manipulations of the on time reports and believe that the company I work for conducts immoral and illegal practices on many levels and in many if not all of its departments on a regular basis.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: A Dash 8 Captain reported instances of inaccurate planned fuel loads resulting in shortfalls of reserves enroute despite the lack of any obvious reasons for increased fuel burn. Reporter believes the fuel planning shortfalls are the result of conscious acts on the part of the company to maximize payloads.

Narrative: While conducting our flight our fuel supply fell short of what was planned. We experienced no delays that would explain the shortage. We took off with fuel well above the minimum required and while in cruise realized it would be necessary to drop our planned alternate airport to land with legal fuel reserve. There was a head wind. I don't know if it was greater then the wind used to calculate the burn. We flew at FL200 instead of planned FL220. However; not even accounting for the additional fuel to climb to FL220 the difference in cruise burn was only 58 LBS; this is an insignificant difference. The fuel calculations were wrong.What is most disturbing is that my First Officer remarked that he had experienced this before at least a few times and other coworkers I have spoken with have also experienced the same thing. This has happened to me before with the fuel being short to even a much greater extent. On another recent flight we had an even greater margin of fuel reserve above the minimum required on the release. We experienced no delays that would account for the shortage. In fact our alternate was our departure airport so when we learned that we would not be able to land at our destination due to weather we were already closer to our alternate then if we would have had to go all the way to the destination airport and then go to the alternate. Our required 45 minute burn after reaching our farthest alternate was recently raised by the company to a higher amount and we did not even have enough for the previous required fuel reserve. There were thunderstorms that developed between us and our alternate that should have been taken into consideration and obviously were not. We changed our alternate to an airport which was very close and landed there.I was questioned a few days later by my Chief Pilot and did not tell him about the shortage. I believe that; based on past experience; if I had discussed it with him all possible efforts would be made to somehow twist the scenario into making this my fault. I was fatigued due to the very long work days that we experienced and was being rushed to try and get the flight out on time and we had weight and balance issues. Otherwise I may have had the time and foresight to take more fuel even though it was not required by the release.I believe that fuel planning is being intentionally manipulated to allow more passengers and bags on the aircraft. I have personally seen manipulations of the on time reports and believe that the company I work for conducts immoral and illegal practices on many levels and in many if not all of its departments on a regular basis.

Data retrieved from NASA's ASRS site as of April 2012 and automatically converted to unabbreviated mixed upper/lowercase text. This report is for informational purposes with no guarantee of accuracy. See NASA's ASRS site for official report.