Narrative:

Immediately after being released by the push man ATC told us to hold our position. I noticed a long line of aircraft waiting to depart so I had the first officer shut down the right engine. After waiting for 10 minutes we were finally told to call clearance for a reroute. We did and then waited another ten minutes to taxi. While enroute to our runway we were told to call clearance to get yet another reroute. We did and got our position in the long line for takeoff. We put the new flight plan in the FMC with just a few winds and it told us that we would land with about 10K of fuel. This made sense as our original flight had us landing with 10.9. The reroute was due to a ground stop over rbv due to thunderstorms. We then told dispatch of our new route and told them to give us a new fuel burn and a new flight plan with current winds. After a long time they finally got back to us showing landing with 6.1 in lax. We were confused about the big hit but were satisfied that landing with over an hour of fuel in la with the current forecast was a safe decision. Also we thought once we got in the air the FMC would adjust to a figure somewhere in between the 6.1 and the FMC 10.0. We decided to accept this route with this fuel if takeoff was imminent. It was and we were airborne 5 minutes later. Sure enough when we were on our route the FMC adjusted to having us land with 6.5 in la. On climbout however ATC kept us level at 17;000 ft for almost twenty minutes. I asked for higher but was ignored. I did not want to use any of our reserves for excessive delays in case we needed to deviate for weather or for wind busts. They finally gave us a slow climb to 24;000 ft where they kept us for another twenty minutes. Also; they gave us 3 severe vectors. Sure enough later we had a wind bust of 25 KTS at one altitude and about 40 KTS for another sector later on. We deviated one time for weather. We ended up landing with about 50 minutes of fuel which was not the plan and was caused by excessive delays by ATC.my point is that I should have been able to say 'minimum fuel' no matter where it is in the phase of flight. Yes we always had the option of landing short in las or someplace and we kept that option open after ATC used up all our reserves but that is always a last resort for obvious reasons. Please change the procedure to allow us to say 'unable' for excessive ATC problems. Minimal fuel should have another vehicle for safe planning so we can refuse ATC spending our reserve fuel that we need for contingencies.

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Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: B757 Captain describes a transcontinental flight that is delayed on the airport due to enroute weather then rerouted. Enroute altitude restrictions and severe vectors result in landing with less than 5;000 LBS of fuel. Reporter believes that declaring minimum fuel early in a flight should be an option for flight crews.

Narrative: Immediately after being released by the push man ATC told us to hold our position. I noticed a long line of aircraft waiting to depart so I had the First Officer shut down the right engine. After waiting for 10 minutes we were finally told to call clearance for a reroute. We did and then waited another ten minutes to taxi. While enroute to our runway we were told to call clearance to get yet another reroute. We did and got our position in the long line for takeoff. We put the new flight plan in the FMC with just a few winds and it told us that we would land with about 10K of fuel. This made sense as our original flight had us landing with 10.9. The reroute was due to a ground stop over RBV due to thunderstorms. We then told Dispatch of our new route and told them to give us a new fuel burn and a new flight plan with current winds. After a long time they finally got back to us showing landing with 6.1 in LAX. We were confused about the big hit but were satisfied that landing with over an hour of fuel in LA with the current forecast was a safe decision. Also we thought once we got in the air the FMC would adjust to a figure somewhere in between the 6.1 and the FMC 10.0. We decided to accept this route with this fuel if takeoff was imminent. It was and we were airborne 5 minutes later. Sure enough when we were on our route the FMC adjusted to having us land with 6.5 in LA. On climbout however ATC kept us level at 17;000 FT for almost twenty minutes. I asked for higher but was ignored. I did not want to use any of our reserves for excessive delays in case we needed to deviate for weather or for wind busts. They finally gave us a slow climb to 24;000 FT where they kept us for another twenty minutes. Also; they gave us 3 severe vectors. Sure enough later we had a wind bust of 25 KTS at one altitude and about 40 KTS for another sector later on. We deviated one time for weather. We ended up landing with about 50 minutes of fuel which was not the plan and was caused by excessive delays by ATC.My point is that I should have been able to say 'minimum fuel' no matter where it is in the phase of flight. Yes we always had the option of landing short in LAS or someplace and we kept that option open after ATC used up all our reserves but that is always a last resort for obvious reasons. Please change the procedure to allow us to say 'unable' for excessive ATC problems. Minimal Fuel should have another vehicle for safe planning so we can refuse ATC spending our reserve fuel that we need for contingencies.

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.