Aircraft fuel burn calculator

Enter the planned flight time, the aircraft's expected hourly fuel-burn rate, and the reserve duration required for your planning context. The result shows trip fuel, reserve fuel, total fuel, and total endurance in one consistent unit. It is useful for preliminary calculations and cross-checks, but it does not replace an approved flight plan, aircraft performance data, or the rules that apply to a particular operation.

Start with a realistic time and burn rate

The calculation begins with two operational estimates: planned flight time and hourly fuel burn. Enter flight time in decimal hours, so two hours and thirty minutes becomes 2.5 hours. The hourly rate must use the same unit you want in the answer, whether that is US gallons, liters, kilograms, or pounds. The calculator multiplies those values to produce trip fuel. Accuracy therefore depends on the quality of both inputs. Use a burn rate appropriate to the aircraft, engine setting, altitude, mixture or power-management technique, and phase mix expected for the flight. A single cruise figure may understate fuel when climb, taxi, holding, or other high-consumption periods are significant. For operational planning, derive the rate and time from approved aircraft information and your organization's procedures. This tool performs transparent arithmetic; it does not infer weather, routing, aircraft loading, engine condition, or a fuel density conversion. Keeping the selected unit unchanged avoids quietly mixing volume and mass, a mistake that can make an otherwise neat result unsafe.

Add the reserve as an endurance allowance

Reserve is entered as minutes of additional endurance. The calculator converts those minutes to hours, multiplies them by the same hourly burn rate, and reports reserve fuel separately from trip fuel. For example, a 45-minute allowance is 0.75 hour, so an aircraft burning 48 US gallons per hour needs 36 US gallons for that entered reserve. Separating the values makes the assumption easy to inspect and change. The default is 30 minutes only as a convenient starting value, not as a statement of what any regulation requires. Applicable reserve rules can depend on flight rules, destination and alternate requirements, day or night operation, aircraft category, jurisdiction, operator approvals, weather, and contingencies. Some planning systems also distinguish contingency, alternate, final reserve, additional, taxi, unusable, and discretionary fuel. If those categories apply, calculate or add them according to the authoritative procedure rather than treating this one reserve field as a complete legal fuel plan. Always verify the current requirement with the governing authority and approved manuals.

Read and use the result responsibly

The output presents trip fuel, reserve fuel, and their sum as total fuel. It also shows reserve time in hours and the combined endurance represented by the entered flight and reserve durations. These fields are useful for checking a dispatch worksheet, testing how a longer route changes uplift, or comparing scenarios with different expected burn rates. Results are rounded to six decimal places for stable, repeatable output, although real fuel measurements and performance data are rarely meaningful to that precision. No unit conversion is performed: if the hourly rate is kilograms per hour, every fuel result is in kilograms; if it is liters per hour, every result is in liters. The total is not automatically adjusted for taxi fuel, start and warm-up, climb-specific consumption, unusable fuel, alternate routing, delays, wind, temperature, degradation, minimum dispatch quantities, or tank limitations. Treat it as one clearly defined arithmetic check within a fuller planning process. Before flight, reconcile the result against approved performance data, actual conditions, fuel-on-board measurements, and all applicable operational requirements.