Overweight...

Reminds me of the cargo days in the 1990s, where the numbers on the manifest worked out...sometimes barely, but there was no way in hell the Chieftain was under its MTOW, just with how bogged down it was taxiing and how it "felt"; though I couldn't formally prove it, as the weight numbers on the cargo bins were there to see. But, it still flew.........alas with some extra takeoff run.
I love flying a chieftain, but I can't fathom what it's like flying those big ol TIO540s in Arizona. They get toasty enough operating from sea level at standard temp!
 
Considering that nobody weighs 190lb...

Wait until you do a sports charter (if you haven't yet) and do exact weights...things that make you go hmmm. We even had a D1 girls basketball team once so it was a fairly normalized weight scenario (no 300lb linebackers) and even that was significantly different than 'average' weights.
 
I love flying a chieftain, but I can't fathom what it's like flying those big ol TIO540s in Arizona. They get toasty enough operating from sea level at standard temp!

I don't ever really recall having significant temperature issues when I flew the PA31-350 out of PHX. Maybe it was how we operated them, but it just didn't really ever become an issue.
 
Bag jammin'. Usually end up doing it myself when *cough* IAD *cough* rampers look at me like I have two heads when we ask for gate checks to be brought in.

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Did they show up five prior to departure? Is your company trying to meet performance metrics for on-time performance. Is ZFW a factor? I'm OK with a white lie (sure we'll burn xxx more fuel than planned on taxi.) versus an outright lie ( I've always deducted 600 lbs. and nobody has ever said anything~ a senior captain I flew with)
 
Nobody has mentioned that this may be a scenario where you have no holding/contingency fuel and are restricted by landing weight. RJ 200 gets bad with an alternate during the winter. No way to massage the numbers (short of bags in the cabin or leaving stuff behind) if there is no extra fuel to burn.

It happened more often than I'd have liked while I was at Pinnacle. Both with me flying and with me jump seating.
 
One practice I am leery of that I see happening a lot lately is pilots using headwinds to get more weight off the runway when it involves using all or most of the reported wind whether it be sustained and/or gusts. It does increase the performance MTOW but if for some reason you lost that wind and were to lose an engine or need to abort takeoff, it could mean you end up going off the other end of the runway depending on braking performance and how overweight you had become. Yes the risk of losing an engine at or before V1 is not that high and its rare that winds suddenly calm but dont most accidents begin and end with a sequence of events that rarely happen and all need to happen for that accident to have occurred?

How often are you runway limited though? I can't remember the last time I was runway limited in the CRJ. It's almost landing weight limiting in my experience in the RJ. I otherwise agree with you about wind. I'd be very conservative about adding a wind that might only be 8 knots. Thats basically calm. 20+ knots? Now we got something to work with!
 
That works in 91 and possibly in 135 depending on the ops. For 121 you have to make the numbers work before you push. Hence getting dispatch to work with you on the enroute burn or pulling bags inside.
You worked at Colgan. The answer was - add 240 lbs to my taxi fuel. Juan would say ok, give you time/initials- and problem solved.


Thought it was pretty funny when they planned me to BOS with 17 passengers. Ended up being full flight with FAA in the jumonseat. "Ok- make your taxi fuel 2200lbs".... me,"that's a 5 hour taxi... I can't do that." Rather than refuel, I, and the Fed sat in the ballpark for 2.5 hours, then flew to Bos @8k feet. CO ops was mighty pissed that we went ahead and wasted 2.5 hours of taxi fuel in the ball park.
 
In the A340 it's easy, if you're OVW you can't initiate the flight : "unable, try another configuration". Off goes the jumpseater.
 
You're full, and have a jumpseater.
You run the numbers and find out you're landing will be 226lbs over weight.
(Well below max takeoff. )

The leg is 40 ish minutes air time.

What do you do?

Leave the APU up, drop the gear early, etc.

Some of our post-config'd 319's can run a little heavy on shorter legs so I've had to do that a few times when the burn calculations didn't work out in flight.
 
Leave the APU up, drop the gear early, etc.

Some of our post-config'd 319's can run a little heavy on shorter legs so I've had to do that a few times when the burn calculations didn't work out in flight.

Why heavy on shorter legs? Burn calc is less accurate?
 
On PBS's documentary on Colgan and regional airlines ("Flying Cheap") they interviewed a Colgan FO who turned in his CA to the FAA for a Saab 340 flight in which the CA had turned some adult weights into children weights and penciled that in on the final load sheet in order to get a jumpseater on. Of course the FO was "okay with it" until after landing he discovered the numbers were fudged.

And here's a snipped of that letter to the FAA:

Untitled.png




Look at how that is written. The FO straight up reported his CA to the FAA, with writing of the statement is true to the best of my knowledge under penalty of perjury.


Seriously, WhoTF does that?



And yeah, the FAA emergency revoked the CA's ATP for good, I believe his career was done for with this FO ratting out.
 
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On PBS's documentary on Colgan and regional airlines ("Flying Cheap") they interviewed a Colgan FO who turned in his CA to the FAA for a Saab 340 flight in which the CA had turned some adult weights into children weights and penciled that in on the final load sheet in order to get a jumpseater on. Of course the FO was "okay with it" until after landing he discovered the numbers were fudged.

And here's a snipped of that letter to the FAA:

Untitled.png




Look at how that is written. The FO straight up reported his CA to the FAA, with writing of the statement is true to the best of my knowledge under penalty of perjury.


Seriously, WhoTF does that?



And yeah, the FAA emergency revoked the CA's ATP for good, I believe his career was done for with this FO ratting out.

That's one way to move up a number. It puts a target on your back, sure, but seniority trumps all.
 
On PBS's documentary on Colgan and regional airlines ("Flying Cheap") they interviewed a Colgan FO who turned in his CA to the FAA for a Saab 340 flight in which the CA had turned some adult weights into children weights and penciled that in on the final load sheet in order to get a jumpseater on. Of course the FO was "okay with it" until after landing he discovered the numbers were fudged.

And here's a snipped of that letter to the FAA:

Untitled.png




Look at how that is written. The FO straight up reported his CA to the FAA, with writing of the statement is true to the best of my knowledge under penalty of perjury.


Seriously, WhoTF does that?



And yeah, the FAA emergency revoked the CA's ATP for good, I believe his career was done for with this FO ratting out.

Straight up fakes a weight and balance? I know right?

While that isn't remotely how I'd handle that, well, you take your chances right?

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Straight up fakes a weight and balance? I know right?

While that isn't remotely how I'd handle that, well, you take your chances right?

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I don't know his methodology, but maybe had some adults count as children, not sure. The weight and balance form is also shown briefly in the


But here's my problem with the rat FO. He was there too. He knew what their weight was with the jumpseater, he knew they couldn't be legal. So what was his excuse for accepting the situation and taking off? He claims he didn't know the form was altered til after landing. Uh huh.

From one Colgan guy I know, it seemed this FO was about to be fired (and lets be honest, he comes off as a d**k in the PBS video), and he decided to wouldn't go down alone. This was hardly an example of a Colgan pilot screaming "safety!" It was more so scorned and going down, may as well take others with him kinda situation. Lets be honest, as a crew, you both fark up. It's both that go down. I find it incredible that (even without a union) that the FO couldn't find some other recourse to fix this problem. Some in-house method, surely Colgan must have had like an equivalent of pro-Standards. Did they have ASAP/ERC back then? That would be another avenue.

I don't see why you'd just write straight up to the FAA that you are telling the truth "under penalty of perjury" ESPECIALLY in this case when it is definitely sole-source event. No one knew the truth of that flight except the pilots. Not ATC, etc.
 
I don't see why you'd just write straight up to the FAA that you are telling the truth "under penalty of perjury" ESPECIALLY in this case when it is definitely sole-source event. No one knew the truth of that flight except the pilots. Not ATC, etc.

I figure it wouldn't be hard to re-create a Weight and Balance given the passenger count/bag count.
 
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