Originally Posted by
John Aldeborgh
Please relax, weight and balance envelopes on aircraft used as air carriers are large and the airlines are extremely careful with loading cargo to make this invisible to passengers so please stop making inexperienced people unnecessarily nervous. Yes, sometimes passenger counts are reduced on smaller planes but this is due to total weight on hot days and has nothing to do with weight and balance. Also, the Concord crashed in Paris due to debris puncturing the fuel system and had nothing to do with weight and balance. Concord was grounded because the aircraft had reached their maximum airframe hours and were expensive to maintain nothing more ominous than that, so again, please stop trying to inflate things. BTW, I’m a licensed pilot and know what I’m talking about.
At the risk of sounding snarky, weights on "smaller" planes are not only reduced because of weight on a hot day. More often, it's due to reaching overall max take off weight, the probability of being over max landing weight (the most common restriction you'll see - due to required alternate fuel for weather at the destination that requires a distant alternate), high altitude at the departure airport which affects take off and climb performance regardless of temperature, obstacle clearance in the event of an engine failure at take off at the departure airport regardless of temperature (Reno for example), or if flying over mountains, drift down clearance should an engine fail enroute to the destination.
Every airline flight has a weight restriction and reason for it - every single one. Many however are never going to reach that number even with every seat and the cargo bulked out. Some though do - typically weather related but by no means always (driftdown for example). Can't simply equate weight restrictions to "total weight on hot days" though.