Originally Posted by
FOUR REDS
Hello Sidestick pilot,
Before I became an airline pilot I was as a despatcher, on the continent, in the period 1966-1980.
Operations of particularly longhaul flights has significantly changed since then.
Like Gatwick-Lisbon-Las Palmas-Bathurst-Freetown (1967) or UK-Holland-Athens-Karachi-Delhi-Hong Kong (70s). As you say it is not necessary for flight crew to know the exact breakdown of pax/bags/cargo and weight. But this info, per destination, was necessary for handling staff at onward stations, fully broken down into Ad/Ch/Inf and B/C/M and division of loads in cabins as well as the holds. On departure an IATA-formatted loadmessage was sent to ALL onward stations, enabling them to prepare a fairly quick turnaround, whilst disregarding their inbound load and adding their checked-in numbers, again per destination, to the individual fields on the loadsheet. This facilitated load and fuel planning in advance. You can imagine that holds used to be loaded per destination, if at all possible. This avoids having to unload/load cargo and baggage to get to your airport's intended load.
I shall shortly try if I can lay my hands on a sample sheet.. In the meantime I hope this helps somewhat!!
Regards,
Four Reds Arie
ps I am out off the flying game for 17 years and a bit rusty
Dear Four Reds Arie,
Thank you so much for your kind reply and what an impressive aviation career!
Two more questions, if I may ask. In what cases do we include transit passengers/loads to our sheet and when do we need the 'cabin bags' fields of a load sheet?
If I understand correctly, all the baggage in the cabin that is not included to the passenger weight is supposed to be entered as 'cabin bags' but I can not imagine situation, where this would be necessary. In my airline, if a passenger has a piece of cabin luggage that is too big, it goes in the cargo holds and is included to the weight of the rest of the baggage.
Once again, thank you for your help. I really appreciate your time!
Kind Regards,
SP