MojaveFlyer

Yesterday we flew RNO-DEN and DEN-BOS. On both flights, there were multiple announcements that there were "weight restrictions" which would prevent more bags from being put in the hold, so if the overheads were full and pax had bags they would need to be offloaded "which would delay your flight". This was accompanied by repeated exhortations to put anything small under the seat in front of you.

Was this just coincidence, I wonder, or is it part of a new campaign to get on time departures by not needed to check bags carried on? It was not unusually hot at either airport, for the seasons, and winds did not appear to be an issue given our in air flight times.

whitethunder

I used to see this when I lived in Northern Canada all the time, was usually a cargo thing (along with the spreading passengers out between the front and back etc)

clubord

My guess would be excessive cargo weights as well.

gene2632

Hot weather and high altitude are often a problem in DEN during the summer months. The baggage part, not so sure about that but we have seen people bumped from flights from DEN because of the summer weight restrictions.

mduell

It's real, bags in the cabin are accounted for differently than bags in the hold.

Also RNO and DEN are both hot this time of year in addition to being high, which limits performance.

tods27

Looks like RNO was all mainline, but one flight was a 320, which I've always thought were underpowered, plus the high in RNO was 97 so definitely hot. DEN was not hot yesterday: The official high temp was 79. There certainly still could have been restrictions, but I'm betting freight/cargo more than temp + altitude in DEN.

MojaveFlyer

Ah, right about altitude. We'd been hiking in the Sierra for a few weeks, often between 10k - 13k, so I was thinking there was a lot of oxygen down at those airport levels

JAXPax

As someone mentioned, it is how the bags are accounted for. For the most part, on most regularly scheduled commercial airline flights (exception for charters carrying like a football team), every male weighs 200 lbs in summer and 205 lbs in winter, and females are 179 in the summer and 184 in the winter, including all carry-on baggage/personal items/outerwear in the winter.

So, if all roller bags, for example, ride in the cabin, they are already accounted for in the passenger weight. Checked bags down below weigh 30 lbs each, with 50 lbs typically used for heavy bags (some use 40 like Frontier not only to charge overweight but for reasons in their own weight and balance program). So, any carry-on that is checked into the hold goes from being included in your weight to being 30 extra lbs to add to aircraft weight in the paper exercise.

Thus, you have a flight that's optimized for range/weight/fuel, as you mentioned perhaps for weather/temperature, adding a few hundred more pounds could have an impact and may even mean not adding a standby passenger, or worst case having to get a volunteer. United even for the winter had to block seats on its 757s because of the increase in standard passenger weights last year.

In my airline days, I once had at my station an A320 departing from my east coast location for Las Vegas on New Years Eve. Of course it was full. At the end of boarding, the dispatcher called for more fuel and a weight reduction due to an ATC reroute. My wonderful employees are the gate called down to me and thought that since it was NYE and Vegas that begging 4 people to get off the plane, in exchange for a flight tomorrow (I couldn't even buy them a ticket on another airline - they were sold out), that job fit the general manager job description and had some comment about hazard pay. $1000, hotel, meals, and a ticket at 6am the next morning on another airline wouldn't get anybody to budge (not that I figured it would), so I dutifully informed the passengers that because of this, the last 24 checked bags loaded would be pulled off at random so that many folks won't have their NYE party clothes. The Captain called into operations later laughing he thought the plane was going to tip to the side as so many people were trying to look out the right side windows at which bags were coming back down the beltloader.

Raymoland

Keep in mind that in most cases it's single engine performance that is thr limiting factor. Can the airplane still climb away and meet the gradient necessary to avoid all obstacles in the engine failure takeoff path.

Poster above is correct about how bags are accounted for. Not having to gate check carryons results in a lower takeoff weight. Which, if you stop and think about it, is preposterous since the airplane is the same actual weight in both situations. The terrain you hit or don't hit when an engine fails, doesn't care how it looked on paper.,...

mduell

That's 39F above the ISA standard day temperature for DEN's altitude.

dblumenhoff

Yes and if it gets to the point where you can't fit all the bags in the overhead, that is proof of the fact that the existing allowance has not accounted for what people brought in reality, so accounting for an extra x * 30 lb is probably closer to accurate.

mahasamatman

cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Density_altitude

CALMSP

nothing to do with cargo (UA doesn't actually ship cargo to/from RNO by plane).

but restrictions are not just takeoff. you have enroute limitations, landing limitations, could be a zero fuel weight limitation or could be due to an MEL reducing payload.

JAXPax

On Saturday, I was connecting in IAD and the adjacent gate had the IAD-BZN nonstop, which surprisingly was being operated on a Mesa E175. I guess due to extra fuel (per the gate agent), they were asking for EIGHT volunteers to take $700 and go via Denver. Quite an impact (and maybe I am just not familiar but that seems like it stretches that aircraft's mission capability if full).

CALMSP

there is held seats on that flight given the stage length, so not just a one-time "extra fuel".