From my experience in the world of charters, using standard weights for pax and bags, the final payload weight arrived at is, at best, an educated guess. Experience shows that, on holiday flights, as oppose to business flights, the load is likely to be a bit under as there will be a fair proportion of women and children.
In the instance quoted here, if there were no other considerations and standard weights were being used, I would have been inclined to increase the taxi burn on the load sheet by 170kgs and stay legal.
Last edited by parabellum; 24th Apr 2011 at 02:48.