Originally Posted by
dcline414
Since you seem to have a good understanding of the balance issues with the MD-88s, is this not an avoidable issue? Surely they have a good idea how many pax and how much baggage they have to distribute by the time loading begins.
It sounds like an expensive loading error if it resulted in extra fuel burn in flight, costs for sandbags and loading them, and (in this case) nearly an hour-long departure delay (plane was airborne at 6pm EDT after scheduled 5:03 departure). If this happens routinely, this is yet another reason why the MDs need to go live in the desert forever.
Maybe Delta should squeeze harder on operations for cost savings rather than sitting on their ham sandwiches' wallets to grow top line revenue!
Quite honestly, I witnessed sandbag ballasts needed for a MD88 maybe a handful of times over the last 6-7 years. More times than not, the weight and balance problem stems from being overweight due to fuel, bags and passenger counts (think MD90 on high headwind westbound flights from MSP).
Sandbags are relatively cheap and there are a ton floating around the system. The only reason why the flight had to take a 30 min hit was that no matter where they were parked, they had to head over to the C/D concourses as the mainlines use ballasts so infrequently they probably didn't have enough stocked over on the mainline gates.
When someone says 1200 lbs, it sounds like a lot. But if you take the average weight of a passenger (lets use 200lb per person average), that is only 6 people. The fuel costs associated with adding 1200lbs is negligible. Remember, when you add sand bags, it usually means there wasn't enough weight loaded into the cargo bin, meaning that aircraft was traveling light anyways. Sandbags are never added into weight critical flights (meaning potentially overweight flights that may cause the need for volunteers).