how many of us here can say 'I've never taken off over mtow?" I can't imagine their would be to many
Hopefully there will be nobody who KNOWINGLY did that but, I think, that's one of the points of this discussion.
Quite a few years ago I flew a 757 to Athens (Greece) and quite happily went about the business of getting the aircraft turned round for our trip back to the UK. I was then asked by one of the dollies if I could give her a hand with a pax bag as she couldn't lift it into the overhead compartment. Well, I started to pick this up and, bugger me, it was all I could do not to give myself a hernia. Anyway, that got my grey cells going and so I did a troll through the cabin and 'tested' some of the other 'not greater than 7kg' bags and was sorely disappointed with the results. My trust in the ground staff had gone from reasonable (we're talking about Greece) to very suspect, so I decided to further investigate with the suitcases being loaded. Every one I tested (very scientifically; by lifting it
) was, in my opinion, very, very, much over the standard weight. It was at this stage that our ground agent gave me the figures and, sure enough, using standard weights, we were within limits.
Did I go? Of course not. I incurred the wrath of my Chief Pilot (for a few seconds) for causing a 1.5 hour delay whilst everything was taken off the aircraft and everybody had their bags weighed i.e I was not satisified with standard weights and went for actual weights. He was quite annoyed that I'd based my decision on my random tests but then was put firmly back in his box when he found that we would have been 1.2 tonnes over our MZFW. We were carrying a bunch of cargo, that had been weighed properly so, to put that into perspective, nearly every pax on that aircraft had gusting 50kg of extra weight.....and that was bags alone.
The point I am making, of course, is that had Doris not asked me to help her with that case I would have been none the wiser. I would have accepted the weights presented to me by the ground staff (you have to trust somebody to do their jobs) and we would have gone merrily on our way, fat, dumb and happy. Until the accident......
I have never, knowingly, taken off over MTOW. I have no idea whether I really have, or not. Bit of a worry eh
