mrezee
Living the dream!
Hey all, I'm in my 3rd month of dispatching at a 121 that flies CRJ2's and 9's. I've been feeling pretty good about it and learning a lot so far. However, the one area I still want to improve on is calculating a max payload and weight restricting.
In our software (the ever-so-popular Sabre dispatch monitor), the system pulls the passenger booking total and automatically calculates for each passenger the standard weight (190 in the summer) plus a bag and a half (30+15) to equal out 235/passenger. Therefore, for a CRJ200 (the CRJ900 will automatically calculate the max payload and split it into max pax/bags on the ramp release), the payload assumed for a full 50 passengers is 11750 lbs. Frequently when it's full and especially when you add on a destination alternate, it either pushes you over max landing weight or leaves you room to take about 100 extra pounds of gas. So I've been putting on the contingency/hold fuel I want to put on, and having the system calculate the max payload I can take with that much fuel (putting MP in the HowFP box, for those that are familiar with Sabre DispMon). Obviously if the flight is booked full or oversold, I need to call the station and give them the payload restriction in max pax/bags they can take.
I've observed my fellow dispatchers use a few different methods to do this during my OJT. For example's sake, let's say the max payload that Sabre spits out is 11,020 lbs.
In our software (the ever-so-popular Sabre dispatch monitor), the system pulls the passenger booking total and automatically calculates for each passenger the standard weight (190 in the summer) plus a bag and a half (30+15) to equal out 235/passenger. Therefore, for a CRJ200 (the CRJ900 will automatically calculate the max payload and split it into max pax/bags on the ramp release), the payload assumed for a full 50 passengers is 11750 lbs. Frequently when it's full and especially when you add on a destination alternate, it either pushes you over max landing weight or leaves you room to take about 100 extra pounds of gas. So I've been putting on the contingency/hold fuel I want to put on, and having the system calculate the max payload I can take with that much fuel (putting MP in the HowFP box, for those that are familiar with Sabre DispMon). Obviously if the flight is booked full or oversold, I need to call the station and give them the payload restriction in max pax/bags they can take.
I've observed my fellow dispatchers use a few different methods to do this during my OJT. For example's sake, let's say the max payload that Sabre spits out is 11,020 lbs.
- The first guy I trained with divided the payload by the system-calculated per-passenger weight with 1.5 bags/person included (235). In this example, it gives us 46.894. So he would call the station and restrict them to 46 pax and 46 bags.
- The second guy I trained with arbitrarily dropped the payload in the flight plan calculation. So he would just manually change the 11750 payload in the CFP to 11000. He said it's never backfired on him and that the system grossly overestimates the payload every time.
- The third guy calculated the total passenger weights based on standard weight (190x50=9500). He then subtracted 11020-9500=1520, which should be the max weight of all the bags. Finally, he divided 1520/30=50.667. So he would tell the station that the flight was restricted to 50 pax and 50 bags. Should the MP have been lower, he still would have kept the restriction at 50 pax and just lowered the max number of bags.
- And finally, the guy who sits next to me now simply reads the station the max payload of 11,020.