Let’s assume a commercial airline recorded the fuel burn from takeoff to landing for all the routes it flew over the past 2 years and the fuel usage was normally distributed. Let’s further assume that the Chicago-to-Newark route averaged 90 minutes of fuel usage with a standard deviation of 10 minutes, and the flight plan called for 1.5 hours of fuel.

(a) Apply the empirical rule to this scenario.

(b) Do you think the airline would approve a pilot’s request for 30 minutes of extra fuel (above what was called for in the flight plan)? Why/

Why not?