weight and balance on a CJ65

[bofie]

Here's the situation...Air Wisc. CJ65 yesterday with 14 passengers. FA says that we all have to cram in to the back of the plane >row 10 for w/b reasons. A young couple who wanted to hold hands or something can't find 2 together so they sit in row 9. FA gets insistent that they split up and have one sit next to a hugely fat guy(who at least was jolly). FA seemed like a schmuck to the 14 of us and panicked one teen who was afraid of flying to begin with and now thought that we were in a marginal a/c.

My questions...

-Was the FA being an ass in saying that sitting one row in front of the requested row 10 would mess up the w/b?

-If he was right, what kind of crappy plane is this anyway that can't fly with people 1 row forward of the w/b point?

BTW, once we landed in PHL the pilots couldn't find their gate and made a lap around F'd terminal like they were looking for a parking spot at the mall. I'd say that there are now 13 pax who will never fly US Airways Exp. again (unfortunately I'm not one of them).

 

[Dont call me Shirley]

. I'd say that there are now 13 pax who will never fly US Airways Exp. again (unfortunately I'm not one of them).

Sadly, if the experience has really soured them badly, they probably wont fly US Airways again at all, since
A. It's hard to avoid express when going pretty much any anywhere.

B. US and Express are pretty much the same thing in the minds of many, many, people.

 

[JAFA]

My questions...

-Was the FA being an ass in saying that sitting one row in front of the requested row 10 would mess up the w/b?

I can't speak directly to the CRJ (crappy replacement jet ). I can tell you that when doing the calculations that one row will make or break being "legal" on most aircraft. Will it affect it in real life? I doubt it, but since my name would go on the lawsuit if it did I'm going to tell the crew row 9 is not row 10. Every aircraft I have ever worked has had a change of MAC chart for each row blocked, most also have per zone, and so blocking 1 thru 8 will give one MAC and 1 thru 9 another. that slight change can put you "out of limits". Was the FA being an ass about it? I wasn't there, but if I had been the one working it they would have been doing as I instructed.

 

[USCREW]

Bofie,

This was a safety issue so your feelings about it are irrelevant.

 

[bofie]

Bofie,

This was a safety issue so your feelings about it are irrelevant.

Well, that was the question that I asked about...was this really a safety issue or was the FA being a jerk. From my seat in row 10 it looked like he was. He certainly could have handled it better in any event. Thankfully a previous poster gave a more helpful answer.

Any chance that you were the FA on that flight? You sound a bit familiar to me.

 

[USCREW]

It's the way that you posed the question in attack mode. You expect a sugar-pie response? You get what you give.

 

[ClueByFour]

It's the way that you posed the question in attack mode. You expect a sugar-pie response? You get what you give.

And that attitude (and presumably the same non-helpful one displayed by the FA on the flight) will now probably result in two more people who won't fly US again.

The right move on the part of the FA is to at least try to find two together for the couple.

The right move for US is to ditch the RJs that can't take a full boat of fuel, bags, and pax and whose W/B requirements remind me of my days of "shuffle the fat guy" in a 172...

 

[alweg22]

As an AWAC pilot let me see if I can help you. The crj also known as a cl65 not cj65
does have some weight and balance issues. Mainly due to the fact that its is a nose heavy airplane. Which means we need to have bags in order to at least have some type of a balance. Since AIRWAYS does such a great job at baggage handling it seems nobody checks bags anymore. So when we have 50 people and 10 bags we need and few pounds of ballast. I find it odd that with only a few people you had to move, that is almost never a problem. But we are not in the habit of moving people for the fun of it. I sense a biased opinion in your post anyway so I am sure anything thing you could find to dislike you would. Have you ever thought that the ramp control in phl may have changed their gate or there was some other problem. I would expect this kind of comment from a normal passenger but not and employee. You guys make me laugh.
So lets see we took 19 people to eri and 24 back than 11 to rdu and 17 back. Should we put a 767 on those runs. The rj is not the be all end all of your problems. You guys seem to think if you got rid of the rj's Airways would have no problems, Doug Parker addressed this himself who do you think feeds your 737's from places like eri and ashville. Lets not forget AWAC gave you 125 million when nobody else would and it has worked well for both of us. We are a good group of people who want to help Airways as best we can.....in fact most times if you walk over to the f concourse you will see our pilots throwing bags and helping passengers with connections so we can get the job done. Also awac is working on the ballast issue. We have changed our w/b program move equipment and will be adding fixed ballast to the back of the plane.

 

[jimcfs]

I had the pleasant experience to take one of your AWAC CL-65's from ROA-CLT last Wed AM. It was definitely one of the best RJ flights I've ever been on. It was at least 3/4 full due to accomodating a cancelled ASA flight to ATL. We didn't have any weight issues (that I was aware of). The people were super... FA did an express coffee-OJ-water service with the cart, and he had a great attitude! I was surprised when the Captain got out in CLT that he was older than most RJ Captains I've seen... I thought he was a mainline captain if I hadn't seen his pins upclose. Nonetheless, a super flight, and would not hesitate to take an AWAC flight again!! A heck of a lot better than the Messup, er, Mesa RJ flights I've taken.

One question on the aircraft: What is the difference between the CL-65 that AWAC uses and the CRJ-200 that Messup and PSA use?

 

[Crzipilot]

Alweg,

Lemme help you out here. You see....before these RJ's came into the system, those routes your flying were operated by dc9's md80's f100's 737's. and amazingly, they were full quite a bit of the time. Number of factors as to why things have gone the way they have.
The biggest thing is, the crj was the answer, not to dwindling load factors or such, but more so in the bigger picture, was the perfect weapon at outsourcing jobs in order to low pay/benefits/retirement.

As to the RJ....not so sure it's a "nose" heavy airplane. With those engines sitting in the back of it. What you might have is the MAC sitting way back, where any row forward of Sec. C is a movement forward in datum. This of course meaning that anyone sitting forward of row 10 is moving the CG forward, and sometimes wickedly forward. The other strange thing is when you guys came into our system, it seemed you were requiring ballast everywhere, whereas others of us were not. We used paper form for w/b then switched over to the acars system similar to what you guys use. With the switch, the CG envelope seems to be curtailed even more than from the Whiz Wheel. Where light bags, full load, now we need ballast if we have J/S. On another note, during our trial period, where we ran the acars and the paper together, there were times on partial loads, where acars said we were out of CG, but the whiz wheel had us smack dab in the middle of the envelope. Personally dealing with some of the contractors out there that develop some of these weight and balance systems, I don't trust them unless I see their actual calculations, but that's a whole 'nother subject.

Jim,
don't think there's really any difference. Maybe engines??? depending on the order you could get Hot or High or Hot/High (had to do with the derating of the engine I believe) Maybe some minor instrument differences up front, but really not sure.
ALW can answer I'm sure, as far as if there's different ZFW/TOW/LW etc.......53,000 tow, 47k LW, 44K ZFW.?

 

[alweg22]

I think the only real difference is that we use and acars system to do the weight and balance system. I agree since we have used the system it seems to have made the cg a little tighter. We us a 3 zone system not sure about others some say mesa only uses 2 and that helps them. You guys are right we have needed ballast and as an fo doing the weight and balance up there, its not fun for us to go over and over the numbers trying to make it work. As I said we are aware of the problem and we have taken several steps to help out. I did a trip this weekend and we never needed it until we took a jumpseater but it was no problem. I have to disagree with you the crj is a nose heavy ship, even with united and w/b done by hand we had to move people aft.
I understand who use to fly these routes but those days are over so until you guys get the 190's which will be great we will have to do it. The big thing that bothers me is many mainline stations treat us like crap....ie we went to pvd asked for a quick turn with no other planes there and it took than 40mins to get out of there. I hope these guys understand the customer does not see the OPERATED BY AIR WISCONSIN they see US AIRWAYS so we all ll need to work together. I will say that overall the Airways staff especially the pilots are very friendly a nice change from United.

 

[N924PS]

Alweg,

Lemme help you out here. You see....before these RJ's came into the system, those routes your flying were operated by dc9's md80's f100's 737's. and amazingly, they were full quite a bit of the time. Number of factors as to why things have gone the way they have.
The biggest thing is, the crj was the answer, not to dwindling load factors or such, but more so in the bigger picture, was the perfect weapon at outsourcing jobs in order to low pay/benefits/retirement.

EXACTLY!

And now the 50 seat RJ is a dinosaur. But because of the cash infusion from Air Wisconsin to keep USAirways in play for the mrege with America West, they will be in the USAirways system for some time to come.

 

[BCDurbin]

Here's the situation...Air Wisc. CJ65 yesterday with 14 passengers. FA says that we all have to cram in to the back of the plane >row 10 for w/b reasons. A young couple who wanted to hold hands or something can't find 2 together so they sit in row 9. FA gets insistent that they split up and have one sit next to a hugely fat guy(who at least was jolly). FA seemed like a schmuck to the 14 of us and panicked one teen who was afraid of flying to begin with and now thought that we were in a marginal a/c.

My questions...

-Was the FA being an ass in saying that sitting one row in front of the requested row 10 would mess up the w/b?

-If he was right, what kind of crappy plane is this anyway that can't fly with people 1 row forward of the w/b point?

BTW, once we landed in PHL the pilots couldn't find their gate and made a lap around F'd terminal like they were looking for a parking spot at the mall. I'd say that there are now 13 pax who will never fly US Airways Exp. again (unfortunately I'm not one of them).

My Answers.....

Yes

He was wrong

Parking problem happens all the time - Operations sometimes can't figure out where we need to go, while the entire time we know exactly where the gate is we eventually end up in!!

 

[john john]

You guys are right we have needed ballast and as an fo doing the weight and balance up there, its not fun for us to go over and over the numbers trying to make it work. As I said we are aware of the problem and we have taken several steps to help out. we never needed it until we took a jumpseater but it was no problem. I have to disagree with you the crj is a nose heavy ship, until you guys get the 190's which will be great we will have to do it. The big thing that bothers me is many mainline stations treat us like crap....I hope these guys understand the customer does not see the OPERATED BY AIR WISCONSIN they see US AIRWAYS so we all ll need to work together.

A lot of young and/or new F/O’s and CAPT’s Mechanics and F/A's at ZW

Some ZW employees did not want to leave UAL so they work with an attitude.

ZW has made back most of there investment in US
More than likely you will see bigger RJ’s a ZW

 

[ItsJustAJob]

I personally think that two people moving from row 10 to row 9 is a minor change. It may not be legal on paper for the change though. Whenever I need the F/A's to move passengers like that, I tell them what we need, and then let them do their thing. Do I know if they are being nice about it? No. Do I know that they actually do it, No.
In most cases, I don't care if they do or not. Like it was mentioned before, when we did the w/b manually, we rarely had to move people and the plane flew just fine. I don't belive that just because it's done by computer, the plane won't be balanced.

As a side note, this is a problem only with the -200's. The -700's are tail heavy, and rarely need any adjustments.