Ldnn1

Indeed I was once told by VS at JFK that my hand luggage was too heavy, so decided to check in my laptop to resolve. Serious schoolboy error! Hard drive got completely destroyed en route with all data lost. Learnt my lesson there.

WorldLux

Yes BA has a limit. 23kg per carry on. Additionally you need to be able to put it in the overhead bin. If you can only lift 10 kg, then you'll have to make due with only 10kg. That said, I doubt most passenger come close to 23 kg with the restricted dimensions and crew generally helps putting things in the bins.

It's not like anyone fills their carry-on to the brim with gold or even heavier metals. They'll probably take the average passenger weight + 2*23kg and they are good to go. I generally have 2*4-5 kg carry-on items. If my neighbour has 2*30 kg, the average is still below the per passenger limit.

:D!

You'd be surprised (and I think you meant "denser" - 23kg of gold weighs just as much as 23kg of anything else)

Harry Harry

I never worry about it.

I think my heaviest carry on so far was about 25-26kg.

Wasn't a problem except for dragging the damn thing through Mumbai airport on the endless miles of carpet.

DorsetKnob

Catching yesterdays LHR-AMS early morning flight I could not believe the volume of hand baggage some had. Ok the flight was quiet so it didn;t make much difference to available space, but all the same. Some lady's bag was so heavy she had to have a member of crew lift it into the racks (didn;t think that was allowed). Another I noticed had a large rucksack, a medium sized wheeled case & a large handbag. Neither of the 1st two would have fitted the guage at the gate!

I remember the days when flying CW I got a bollocking at the check-in desk because my smallish carry on weighed 8.5kg. I was given "special dispensation" not to have to check it.

clarkeysntfc

Flying HBO is your friend there... just don't use a check in desk and print your BP at home/on mobile.

KARFA

There is a standard value used by the airline I believe (possibly standard value ICAO/EASA driven?). Here is an example of the weights section from a flight planning tool I use - you can have flight plans in different formats and I use the LIDO format which is widely used, but I think BA use a different format so it may look different on theirs.

The explanation below is based on my simple understanding so hoping I have't got anything completely wrong. but if so hopefully someone will correct me.



PAX
As you can see this is for 120 passengers and the average weight value used is 104.40 kg per passenger - which is made up of 79.4 kg as actual passenger weight and 25 kg of bags (includes both carry on and checked bags). That would give a total of 12 x 104.4 = 12,528 kg or 12.5 tonnes.

CARGO
Beyond that on this flight there is 2.0 tonnes of cargo - and cargo here is additional cargo not passenger bags which are taken in to account already above.

PAYLOAD
Add those two figures of passenger weight and cargo together and you get your payload 12.5 + 2 = 14.5 tonnes.

ZFW
Now add to that the empty weight of the aircraft (a 737-800 here which in this case is 41,682 kg or 41.7 tonnes which gets you to the zero-fuel weight (ZFW) of 56,210 kg or 56.2 tonnes - i.e. weight of everything in the aircraft but not including any fuel.

FUEL
Next we have fuel and on this flight the block fuel (i.e. the amount that it needs to be loaded up to on stand) is 4,912 kg. However in the fuel section of the flight plan we are expected to burn 227 kg on our taxi out to the runway so we need to take that in to account when calculating the take-off weight.

TOW
So to calculate the take-off weight (TOW) is our ZFW + block fuel - taxi fuel which is 56210 + 4912 - 227 = 60,895 kg or 60.9 tonnes - so the weight of the aircraft and everything in it when take-off is commenced.

LAW
The LAW figure of 59.5 tonnes is the planned landing weight so TOW minus the trip fuel (fuel burned during the flight from take-off to landing - in this case estimated at 1,432 kg) so 60895 - 1432 = 59,463 kg or 59.5 tonnes.


As I say the specific passenger weight value used may vary from the 104.4 kg above, but the principle is the same. I don't know how that figure is specifically set, but it seems there is some suggestion from things I have read that they are adjusted for various factors - for example in winter the passenger figure used may be higher to take in to account more clothes and coats. It would be interesting to understand how it is set and hopefully an expert can enlighten us.

peck

If you were to take your two items of hand luggage and precisely fill them full of gold they would weigh in the region of 1500kg. So don’t forget to buy Geoff Capes a ticket too so he can pop them into the overhead lockers for you.

Regards, your friendly precious metals geek

Flexible preferences

KARFA thanks for this, very enlightening. Do you happen to know if the taxi to runway allowance (here 227kg) includes the 30 seconds or so that the engines are at full throttle on the runway before the aircraft achieves flight? That would make sense to me as that is the actual weight at take off.

KARFA

I don't know for sure but if I had to guess I would think so. Basically that take-off sequence commences as soon as those throttles are pushed forward when on the runway so I would think that is all part of the trip fuel figure rather than the taxi fuel figure.

rapidex

I have seen a passenger at the security prior to the gate at NRT unable to lift his rollaboard onto the belt for the scanner.Simple solution,he reached into said bag and lifted out 3 bars of gold one by one. He could barely lift each bar. The Cathay station manager was watching all this, and quietly took the poor guy aside.

The upshot was the passenger was forced to pay valuable cargo rates for the bars to go into the valuable cargo locker.

I have also seen loaded at PER a 10 ton pallet of gold and a bag of diamonds about the size of a mail sack. We spent the next hour discussing if it would be a viable option to crash in the desert and leg it with the diamonds, but then crew food was served so that plan went out the window

Wong Jnr

Now that's the opposite to what I think, well in business that is.
LH is great for it's two bag allowance and an additional handbag/laptop bag.
Really helps when travelling with the wife

Flexible preferences

Thanks, the reason I ask is that I would have thought that what counts regarding the aircraft weight is the actual weight at take off - so that would be after the engines have burnt quite a lot of weight of fuel in the take off run (which may in itself be longer than the taxiing to the runway).

blutek

This feature recently allowed us to reconfigure our baggage packing from J to WT so as to comply with the lower economy checked allowance. Still carried the same total weight, just less in the Hold which saved us buying an additional checked bag (allowance).

emma69

May I piggy back here - I am flying YYZ-LHR-DXB - the website says that "Your handbag/laptop size bag is guaranteed to travel in the cabin" so questions are
a) what is the likelihood of having to gatecheck the larger bag on this route (still within size and weight limits)
b) If I only have one bag (i.e. I put my handbag inside the cabin bag) would that give me a greater chance of not having to check the cabin bag?
c) if they want me to check the second bag, can I then take out the duty free and other fragile items from the cabin bag (as I am pretty sure I can't put bottles of alcohol / table / laptop safely in the hold), which would render the whole 'check the bag' thing somewhat moot?
d) where do I reclaim the bag if they make me check at YYZ - I am connecting, so really don't want to have to go through everything to baggage claim?

Thanks.