I don't understand why manual load sheets should take longer.
If we had an Ansett aeroplane fall over and a dozen or so extra passengers to accommodate with their baggage a new load sheet could be dropped inside a minute
I'm with you. The problem is practice and familiarity.
For instance,
(a) I can recall the old Track Trips where the FO, necessarily, was a whizz at this and that, including loadsheets. Including time out for a cup of coffee, the typical sheet could be run up in 30 seconds or so. I have no doubt that the TAA folks were every bit as talented.
(b) all the "other" crews, likewise, knew how to run a sheet but would be hard pressed to run one quickly solely due to being out of practice. That didn't matter as the frequency of requirement was such that a few minutes taken to get it right once in a blue moon really didn't impact the operation.
What did concern me on the jets, though, was that so many had not done a sheet for SO long that they had no idea of what was what and some of the strange ideas which arose were, to say the least, interesting.
Easy enough for me to talk, I guess, as I spent a lot of my time designing sheets so running them was second nature for me.
Your guys took a minute ? Sounds like you spared the birch far too much, methinks ..