I have a close family member who flys airliners. He routinely laments having to burn up thousands of pounds of fuel on the ramp to adjust changes to the landing weight projections by dispatch and from over fueling. The amount of waste in a single error (and they are not that infrequent) is enough to heat my house for a year… and I live within 200 miles of the arctic circle. I mean, burning 1000 gallons of fancy diesel once in a while is a rounding error for jetliner operations, but still, it’s absurd that that is the best solution.
This is sad to hear! Early in my career I worked for a company making airport collaborative decision making (A-CDM) software. One of the most impactful projects to which I contributed was a model that calculated the exact right moment for a pilot to turn their engine on given likely pushback times etc. That saved quite a lot of fuel (and therefore cost and pollution) back in the day. It's a real shame if similar thinking isn't being applied to the problem you describe.
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