In my flying I would say it depends on the airport you are flying to and the time of day. For example going up the east coast towards kphl,kdca, or klga you will usually get the star that u filed. This area is pretty consistent, but comes with alot of speed and altitude restrictions. Going into low traffic areas, you may not get a star at all. In most cases you might not have to fly the full star. Vectors may come a little earlier. This happens at kmia alot. The controller will use the star based on his needs, weather and traffic. Altitude and speed restrictions are given to you on the star all the time. For me it's about a 40% chance that I fly a star without any modifications from atc.

Were I work at a regional tower in Sweden, where we control both CTR and TMA up to FL95, the en-route controller calls us up approx. 30-40 min before arrival with an ETA and we give what STAR the flight should take. There are different STAR's for each rwy. The en-route controller already know what rwy is in use but checks with us on what STAR we want the traffic. But that's our side of things. Normally I guess the flight crew already have put in the STAR to expect since they know what rwy to expect according to latest METAR upon departure. Most flights are domestic so the flight time is around an hour. And not that much change in wind direction usually happens within an hour. Just to ad: We don't have any fancy ATIS for the crew to listen to so we have to give them the MET REPORT once they are on our frequency.

The time when STAR is programmed into FMC seemed to me not only matter of convinience and time-saving, but also fuel-planning (especially when one uses FMC for that purpose). The above conversation makes me wonder which part of the route do you take into consideration when computing the trip fuel i.e. fuel above 30' fixed reserve + 10% variable fuel + taxi + alternate + holding? Some STARs burn a lot of fuel, relative to when one flies directly to the airport, so I wonder where do I put the fuel for flying a STAR into the fuel equation? cheers,Jakub

Our flight-plans use the typical STAR that is assigned and they include some maneuver fuel. It also takes into account vertical profile of the STAR just in case it is one of these arrivals that brings you in way down low really far out.