Just this Once... , how does increased OEW with the ARBS make any difference to MTOW? Surely it will simply reduce max fuel weight?
233T MTOW is straight out of 'Global Enabler', the glossy brochure handed out to attendees of the 2013 AMUG in Getafe - a critical audience if ever there was one.
For many years, Airbus used a figure of 0.78 for the fuel SG in its brochures. My suspicion was that this meant that sales brochures could state higher ZFW with max fuel, promising higher payloads. Whereas most military operators assume an SG of 0.80.
The A330MRTT has a max fuel capacity of 139000 litre, so the civil brochure probably stated that max fuel is 139x.78=108.4T, whereas the MRTT brochure uses 139x.8=111.2T. Then it was discovered that with typical ZFW, with 111.2T the aircraft would exceed 233T MTOW - but this doesn't appear to have given the operators any problems.
I found similar issues with early quotes for the A310MRTT where 0.78 had been used and queried why, since 0.80 is the normally accepted value. Trying to turn volumetric figures into typical weight values proved quite a problem...unless accurate SG was taken into account!
Last edited by BEagle; 5th Feb 2019 at 11:29.