I use to be a load planner for delta and I can say that most airlines indeed use a standard baggage weight.
It has been a while but I think it is 12 lbs in summer and 15 in winter. The reason for the heavier winter weight is due to the coats one carries for winter. Size of the bag was not a factor unless it was a duffle bag or SEA bag then you used a hevier weight. These weights only apply to standard comerical flights. When you have a charter flight for The Jacksonville Jaguars or any other football or any sport team than You not only need to know the weight of each bag and each person, but you have to know where in the plane they will sit. I am reasonbly certain that all airlines follw some kind of standard baggage weight. Now how many of you knew that a lot of the commerical airplanes have a weight gauge that lets them know how much weight is actually on the plane.
Of course it does not tell them where the weight is. They use a weight data record to tell them that. That is what I use to do, I had to know the bag count for each type of bag(local or connection) and what bin they were in. 10 min. before departure I would call the bag room for the bag count then enter the count into the computer and it would tell me whether or not the plane was in ballance or if it was over MTOW(MAX TAKEOFF WEIGHT). I also had to be able to calulate the weights manually incase of a power failure or if the computer went down. Trust me that is no picnick depending on the type of plane it could take you about 1/2 hour to come up with the weight data record, and that was if you were lucky.
You think Controllers have a streesfull job try load planning gauranteed to turn your hair grey and cause you to go bald if you stay to long.
by cavity » Tue Sep 26, 2006 6:25 pm 
