Originally Posted by
ijgordon
It’s still an odd and seemingly unnecessary request from a gate agent.
Perhaps it could have been worded better. But it does sound like it was a payload optimized flight. More than likely, a passenger checking a bag at that point would have resulted in either that bag or someone else's bag not making the flight.
I'll admit I'm confused why these MD-90s end up payload optimized so frequently. Seems that most threads on this topic that pop up have MD-90s as the aircraft in question. PHL-ATL is a short flight for an MD-90 and MTOW/MLW are not that far apart (7 tons) so there should usually be plenty of excess cargo capacity on a normal short flight even if overfueled due to WX causing distant alternates or other issues. And Delta runs enough flights between PHL-ATL that I'd be surprised if they picked an MD-90 to haul some heavy cargo.*
Does anyone know if something get MEL'd on MD-90s frequently that results in significantly reduced range/payload capacity?
*edit: I see now that ATL-PHL seems to be an MD-90 only route. So disregard that last point..