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Commercial airlines spend a lot of their operating income on fuel, so in order to maximize shareholder value presumably like to use as little fuel as is safely possible.
Are commercial pilots ever given incentives (e.g. financial, performance review) for reducing fuel usage, or given dis-incentives for excessive fuel usage?
There have been, at various times, and with various carriers, incentive programs set up to encourage pilots to save fuel, improve on-time performance, or some combination of the two.
An example of a fuel-saving incentives program existed at the former Continental Airlines in the early 90s, where pilots would be paid a bonus for using less fuel than planned. The problem was that it wreaked havoc with the schedule itself, as pilots would simply dial back to economy cruise thrust settings, saving fuel but taking noticeably longer to reach their destinations.
An example of an actual-vs-scheduled block incentive program intended to help with on-time performance existed at Silver Airways in their Beech 1900D fleet, whereby pilots would be paid a bonus for each minute they were able to shave off a baseline target time. Ironically enough, it was called the "Green Incentive Program" (don't ask). And it was a can of worms.
I vaguely remember other airlines experimenting with incentives programs relating to fuel consumption and on-time performance, but it's been several years since I left the industry and can't recall any other examples.
In short, yes they do get implemented fairly regularly, but they can be very problematic due to the difficulty in properly designing and managing them (incentivization is a complex problem).
Lastly, since another poster has brought this up, dispatchers do indeed perform most, if not all the flight planning, but the PIC (i.e. Captain of the flight) has the option of overriding most everything the dispatcher plans and arranges for (subject to the carrier's Operational Specifications), including amount of fuel to be carried. Basically, if the Captain decides that the plane is to be filled with as much fuel as it can carry up to MTOW, that's what's going to happen. Might not be the most business-savvy (or even prudent) decision, but it's part of their prerogative as PIC (i.e. the person ultimately responsible for the craft, crew, passengers, and goods onboard).
It's seems like you are talking about part 121 operations which is like delta to Chicago and Atlanta and daily passenger operations. The pilots don't really do the weight and balance(fuel required). Dispatchers do the calculations and then it's sent to the pilots and they double check the math.
I'm gonna say they don't because it's already at mins. Then you have other factors like it's cheaper to buy fuel at this airport so I will top of the tanks so you can fly to another airport and back.
After the collapse of the USSR and break-up of Aeroflot into smaller regional entities, there was (reportedly) a widespread practice of such incentives. Or rather, disincentives to 'waste' fuel. Say, a pilot could be penalised for doing such 'unnecessary' thing as a go-around. This was often unofficial or semi-official, but still put pressure on pilots to compromise safety. It is believed such practice may have contributed to some accidents in the 90s.
Incentivising pilots for reducing fuel requests was definitely not the done thing in Australia when I worked at a commercial airline. The responsibility and final decision making of the captain was absolute. For those pilots perceived to load up too much 'granny gas' as it was called, we used to make charts showing them where they were ranked amongst their fleet type colleagues for putting in more fuel than planned. For the 'bottom' say 5-10% of 'overloaders', they were called in for a meeting with the fleet captain, and shown where they sat in the ranking tables. The pilots found the process endlessly fascinating, but both the company and the crew were aware these conversations were not 'directive' in anyway, just a 'hey here's where you sit: do you think our planning parameters are perhaps too tight?' or 'have you just been getting many marginal weather flight rosters lately?'. This was almost always enough to get the outliers to change their ways slightly (we tracked that too). But at no point were they incentivised to reduce their additional fuel requests, and no-one in management would even ask: the tech crew's charge over their aircraft on the day of operation was absolute, and this was understood by both management and the pilots. Everyone felt that this was an important part of a good safety culture, and never under question, even during tough financial times. Had any bozo tried to tell a pilot how to plan their gas, they'd have been given very short shrift by the pilot concerned, but I'm not aware of that even happening, despite the presence of some genuine 'overloaders'!
