Narrative:

Apparently a discrepancy with the flight paperwork for an international round trip flight was discovered days after the flight took place. Evidently; the computer flight planning system neglected to recognize the 30 minute reserve fuel required for ETOPS flight and omitted it from the dispatch release ramp fuel. The flight plan is the tool I use to ultimately calculate and publish a dispatch release; and this was the case with these flights. I had determined the fuels and routings were good; so I then proceeded to retrieve them to the release shell; and published the releases. In my haste; I did not double check to assure that all the pertinent data correctly carried over onto the dispatch releases. Because dispatchers are required to use a supplemental program to calculate ETOPS flights; one would naturally assume that all necessary parameters needed to publish an accurate flight plan have been met. In this case; the flight plans were correct and valid; however when retrieving them to the flight plan shell; the program inadvertently omitted the required 30 minute ETOPS reserve fuels. I would be less than candid to say that there are no problems with the new flight planning system. Since being implemented; dispatchers have been subjected to uncovering new bugs with the system; and attempting to work around them; if and when they become known. This safety report is the result of just such a problem.

Related reports:

Google
 

Original NASA ASRS Text

Title: Air carrier Dispatcher reports difficulties with new flight planning software; allowing an international flight to be dispatched without the required 30 minute international reserve fuel. The fuel calculations were done correctly; including 30 minute reserve; but when transferred to the release the 30 minute reserve disappeared and was not noticed by Dispatcher or flight crew.

Narrative: Apparently a discrepancy with the flight paperwork for an international round trip flight was discovered days after the flight took place. Evidently; the computer flight planning system neglected to recognize the 30 minute reserve fuel required for ETOPS flight and omitted it from the dispatch release ramp fuel. The flight plan is the tool I use to ultimately calculate and publish a dispatch release; and this was the case with these flights. I had determined the fuels and routings were good; so I then proceeded to retrieve them to the release shell; and published the releases. In my haste; I did not double check to assure that all the pertinent data correctly carried over onto the dispatch releases. Because dispatchers are required to use a supplemental program to calculate ETOPS flights; one would naturally assume that all necessary parameters needed to publish an accurate flight plan have been met. In this case; the flight plans were correct and valid; however when retrieving them to the flight plan shell; the program inadvertently omitted the required 30 minute ETOPS reserve fuels. I would be less than candid to say that there are no problems with the new flight planning system. Since being implemented; dispatchers have been subjected to uncovering new bugs with the system; and attempting to work around them; if and when they become known. This safety report is the result of just such a problem.

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.