New FAA weights= Pain for the 50 seat community.

Here’s a great article from WSJ about the whole mess. The FAA said the goal of this forced weight change was to
The FAA says it’s pushing the change to make sure that aircraft are loaded in accordance with airplane flight-manual limitations. The changes increase safety by reducing the possibility of an overloaded airplane.

While airlines are supposed to keep up with passenger changes, the agency realized that weight gains hadn’t been updated in years.

Some airlines complain privately that the FAA won’t delay adoption of new weight standards until they get past the summer travel surge.


 
I'm late to this thread, but I've always thought if you could weigh an airplane before departure like you could a tractor-trailer at a weigh station it would have a big impact on the industry.

If you could weigh it on a large treadmill, and the treadmill matched the speed of the wheels, would it takeoff?
 
I'm late to this thread, but I've always thought if you could weigh an airplane before departure like you could a tractor-trailer at a weigh station it would have a big impact on the industry.

That's an understatement. Half the jets and all the turboprops would be no-go.

Anyone around here remember the "magic closet" in the B1900D?

Heady days, those.

But back to the issue at hand. Back when I was pushing -200's in the land of beer and polka, Los Federales had just upped weights from I think 165 to 185, and we were pretty screwed even then. Lots of making chicken salad out of chicken s***, but you learned how to be creative. With this latest weight change, I just simply cannot see how it can be done in anything less than cold, clear, chamber of commerce weather. I guess we could start putting first class seats in the RJ. Talk about a let down when you score the upgrade only to find you're on the BarbieJet!

Hell, here in WNderland, we are having issues. Always fun trying to explain why we can't exceed the ZFW to people who last heard about that during initial.
 
I'm late to this thread, but I've always thought if you could weigh an airplane before departure like you could a tractor-trailer at a weigh station it would have a big impact on the industry.
Technologically it would be pretty easy to do. Just build some strain gauges into a couple strategic parts of the landing gear system and voila…weight and balance. Clearly just no one wants to open that can of worms.
 
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