VASAviation - https://www.youtube.com/@VASAviation is a good one. ETA: @Slow_Moving_Vehicle was fast today, damn ninja!
Probably if the emergency is at/after takeoff as they’d need to dump or burn fuel to get below max landing weight to not damage the aircraft / lose control if landing gear breaks. Of course, if you’re in a Sully situation all bets are off with overweight landing
I don’t now how exactly “standardized” training is. And especially not for GenAv pilots. By the time someone is an airline pilot you’ve practiced enough emergencies to know that practically speaking ATC wants it both ways. Or at least that by providing both ways, you won’t be bothered again when you didn’t answer the question they meant to ask.
The actual letter of the operating policies, procedures, and recommended techniques for the USA are provided here: Distress and Urgency Procedures (faa.gov) at 6-3-2.a.3 near the top of the page. Which specifies telling ATC among other things …
(i) Fuel remaining in minutes.
(j) Number of people on board.
The term “Fuel remaining” is further defined in the Pilot/Controller Glossary - F (faa.gov) as:
FUEL REMAINING- A phrase used by either pilots or controllers when relating to the fuel remaining on board until actual fuel exhaustion. When transmitting such information in response to either a controller question or pilot initiated cautionary advisory to air traffic control, pilots will state the APPROXIMATE NUMBER OF MINUTES the flight can continue with the fuel remaining. All reserve fuel SHOULD BE INCLUDED in the time stated, as should an allowance for established fuel gauge system error.
So clearly the official answer is ATC wants to know how long in duration until you flat run out of fuel.
From our end of that conversation, airplanes aren’t really equipped with direct-reading “countdown timer to flameout” meters. Which time in jets depends yugely on altitude and speed, whereas old fashioned ICE aircraft were not nearly so variable in fuel consumption.
IME for each airplane type there’s an established rule of thumb for how to convert the current quantity gauge reading to an approximate time to flameout. Depending on how Yeagertastic you are or are not at the moment ATC asks, that mental math may be beyond you. Some pilots are good at “math in public” as we say; other folks need their fingers. So just hurriedly rattling of the number shown on your panel is the default “dumbguy” thing to do.
For a GA pilot encountering one of their first no-shitters, they may never have really thought about how to make the conversion. And their gauge(s) are probably a lot more like the one in your car, an analog needle bouncing around between 1/4 & 1/2, rather than the digital thousands and hundreds of lbs. / kilos common on jets.
Not really. Or rather how heavy / light we are at the moment is just part and parcel of our awareness throughout the flight, commencing before we even push back from the gate. Whole lotta math goin’ on with that stuff.
Now there are cases where our stopping distance is impacted by whatever problem we have. Which will result in a careful calculation or table lookup to determine how much runway we need (and how much more we want) for our current weight. And how that compares with the various airports and runways on offer wherever we happen to be. But whether that weight is fuel or payload doesn’t matter at all.
Not so much. Although you are correct there’s an established max landing weight for routine ops which is materially lighter than the max takeoff weight, the airplane is still fully capable of landing & stopping successfully at the maximum possible takeoff weight. You might break something if you made a truly awful landing, but anything within the normal range of pilot bad landings won’t shouldn’t break anything. If done rarely. Said another way, max landing weights are far more about long-term structural wear and tear than they are about limitations on one-time operations. I land overweight about once a year, and that’s about typical airline experience. My last was in mid-May.
As well, landing at max weight with certain malfunctions affecting approach speed or stopping ability may require an extremely long runway. Longer than might be readily available. That would be an occasion to consume fuel somehow, whether by circling, or by flying to a more favorable airport.
The actual reason for fuel dumping ability was/is to ensure that airplanes had go-around capability from an approach made with engine(s) inoperative at/near max takeoff weight. As we’ve moved from four-engine airplanes to two-, they’ve become relatively more powerful, and the need for a fuel dumping capability has reduced. Accordingly, a lot of modern 2-engine airliners, even huge ones, lack any dump system. No need.
Circling to burn down fuel is pretty rare these days. About the only reason is if you’ve got a problem that isn’t so dangerous that you really want to land soon before it gets worse, the local airport is not real long, and there’s not a better airport within a reasonable distance. All else equal, if I had a choice between circling for 90 minutes to burn down to shoe-horn into a short runway or flying 2 hours to get to a longer one, I’ll take Door #2 nearly every time.
Makes sense that it’s all or nothing equipment-wise. No “dang, I guess we shoulda brought the big hose” scenarios is a good thing.
As a firefighter the amount of fuel matters a lot, and would determine how we allocate manpower (also equipment). Is this going to be mostly a rescue effort with minor fire suppression or do we have to make a large firefighting effort to even start considering rescue efforts.
Seeing this thread and thinking about how terminology transferred from sea travel to air travel within a few decades, during which time there was still a somewhat religious society, made me think of these two versions of the same hymn:
Titanic - hymn scene - the last 9 seconds of the clip in particular
I always figured it was because they wanted to exclude any politicians or lawyers on the plane. 
I respectfully disagree.
With the exception of the Very Busy Index E airports (Boston, JFK, Newark, Dulles, Charlotte, Orlando. Miami, Ft Lauderdale, Bush, DFW, O’Hare, SeaTac, SFO, LAX, Phoenix)**, airport fire departments are showing up with at most three trucks. Many will only have one or two. Each of those trucks will have a driver and maybe - maybe - a second person in the cab. They aren’t making any response determination based on fuel, it’s all or nothing that’s responding. Their responsibility is to control the exterior fire (90% out) within 50 feet of the fuselage within 60 seconds, and have it fully extinguished in 120 seconds. That’s it. No rescue, no interior firefighting. Barely even considering a handline for exterior firefighting. Its the same as pulling up to a structure fire and putting out the parking lot.
The exterior fire is the fire from the fuel. The interior fire (if there is one - its a crap shoot as to whether the fire makes it inside) is likely caused by the exterior fuel fire being near the fuselage***, which is where the firefighters are going to start suppression efforts as to push the fire away from the people. On aluminum aircraft, an exterior fire will be inside in 90 seconds. Composite aircraft like the 787 and A350 hold up better. The quantity of fuel on board when the plane stopped makes zero difference in the suppression capabilities of what is showing up. They are set up to put out all of the fire within 50 feet of the fuselage, the end. If there’s fuel on fire beyond that, its going to burn out, soak into the ground at the pavement edge, or go down a drain. Fuel fires only burn on the surface. Surfsce area determines quantity of flame, the depth determines the duration (Jet A burns about 1 inch of depth every 8 minutes). Once its out, it doesn’t matter how deep it is.
The additional resources that are needed are to access the aircraft, get lines inside, rescue any remaining occupants, and extinguish any interior fires (including fire that’s not in the cabin proper but is inside the “walls” or cargo holds). Incredibly manpower intensive, and takes an inordinate amount of time. Those resources are going to be allocated based on what the incident is presenting at that instant. You can’t plan where the fire is going to be based on the quantity of fuel while the plane is still flying.
The big yellow trucks, each with that one firefighter who’s been there from the start, are going to keep putting foam on the fuel to make sure it doesnt reignite from everyone breaking the foam blanket apart. Those additional firefighters will be up close to the plane doing everything else that’s needed, unrelated to fuel quantity.
Fuel quantity doesn’t matter in the least. The trucks that are pulling up to take care of the fuel fire will have any quantity of fuel that can be carried by any aircraft out before anyone else shows up to the party.
** The biggest airports are very well staffed, and are going to roll up with a small, well trained and equipped army. If you have the option to pick where you’re going to crash, make it an Index E airport. Many of the Index D airports are pretty good, too. Stay away from the Index A, B, and most of the C airports.
*** For example, the Asiana 214 crash linked to above - very little fuel fire, but the #2 engine on fire tucked under the right side of the fuselage got the fire inside the plane, which was a nightmare. SFFD rescued 5 passengers entrapped in wreckage from the interior while the plane was on fire. As much bad press as they got for running the young woman over (there is more to that story that I won’t go into in a public forum), they really did an amazing job on rescues - that honestly would never have happened at 510 or so of the other air carrier airports in the US.
Thank you for that explanation, and I do see your point.
[Moderating]
The discussion has drifted a bit from the original question, but it looks like we’re still getting good, factual discussion going here, and so at the OP’s request, I’ve edited the title to encompass the drift.
Thank you.
Said another way, always crash at a hub city, never a spoke city. Or at least only rarely a spoke city and make it a big(ger) one. 
Awesome post; thank you. I learned a few things too. Just in time to retire and not need it any more. C’est la Guerre.
By far the best part of the Dope is that it almost doesn’t matter what kind of expert we need, there’s one handy by to set us all straight.
Imagine how many lives we could save if only people would plan their accidents properly.
Yeah.
Sully would have been screwed if that had happened in Phoenix or Charlotte, to name two other USAir hubs at the time. He’s good, but nobody is that good. Picking LGA for his birdstrikes was excellent foresight. 