Many years ago doing a 1hr sector to a holiday destination in a 321, lots of passengers that “enjoyed” fast food and free carry on luggage.
At transition (10,000ft) a quick calculation of the FOB + Fuel Burn and all was well, but then I glanced at the GW on the Lower screen.
Recalculating the numbers, FOB+FB+ZFW= 1.8 T more than an our Calculated TOW. Our projected LW was only 1.2T less than our Calculated TOW for a 3T burn.
So, the FAC calculated GW was 1.8T higher than the Calculated TOW??? The Alert for incorrect data entry only happens at ~7T
At the time we were still using the paper T/O tables, so lots of factoring was built in, especially by the crew, thankfully.
I reported it to the company, there was an investigation. Changes were made and shortly after the weight used for Males and Females was changed to be the same, 83kg.
The 83kgs includes 7kg of carry on, bags were checked for weight and size with the heavier/larger bags going underfloor at a very exorbitant charge. This has become a very profitable revenue stream.
I look at the pax sometimes and wonder if this is enough. I’m 5’7” (172cm) and am 80kg, there are a lot bigger people than me.
The company continued to have issues with the boarding programs and had more incidents of incorrect paperwork being ACARS’ed to the aircraft. Ie: one flight took off with 150 on the manifest, but actually had 180 onboard.
Major errors were found with the boarding system, it took more than 12 months to sort it out, and we still have to conduct a headcount about 4/10 flights because they can’t seem to get it right.
I noticed our newer CEO’s don’t have any mention of this FAC calculation post take off in the manuals, but still mentions it for Approach speed calculations.
On the Wide body, summer/winter weights were scrapped, as were “Asian” weights, as it was found our pax were predominately Anglo and had maximum carry on.