We were operating around Africa, the Middle East and SE Asia in Classic B747 with AAI for some years doing manual load sheets at each and every departure.
The crew always specified the %age of load for the front and rear holds.
That's what was considered quite normal for most of my time there, I wouldn't have trusted it any other way, and still wouldn't !!
We never had any loading incidents, just a couple of times the rotate was a little 'different', but that's the case anywhere !!
Just a wee bit of trimming while accelerating thru V2 !!
Cheers FD
