Originally Posted by
tartare
A technical question for you all if I may.
Do heavy aircraft such as airliners or the C-17 use the weight on wheels sensors to measure the actual all up weight of the aircraft in real time, and then display that figure on the flight computer, EFIS thingey in the middle of the instrument pedestal?
Would the Commander of Reach 871 have been able to watch a scrolling figure of the weight of his jet increasing by the second as people rushed up the ramp?
Or would he just rely on coms from his loadie saying `we've got roughly 800 pax on board boss' (they thought it was 800 rather than 600 at first) and do a quick mental calculation to get his MAUW on the spot?
Average pax = 200lbs, x 800 = 160,000lbs of human cargo.
The C-17 can carry one M1 Abrahms - weighing in at around 140,000lbs...
Nope, the WOW switches are basically dumb switches that have a binary output, weight on or off, nothing in between. Under normal operations, freight would be weighed and PAX estimated using a standard formula. Under these kind of operations, I would think emergency authorisations would be in place based on relative risk. As you stated correctly, the C-17 can easily lift an Abrams tank and more (the C of G being the main limit on that baby), 6,7 or 800 people with more headroom than first class was well within the aircrafts lift capability.