I've only worked on A346 for LH and these were a sod to trim well.
You have 8 full pallet positions in the forward hold and to keep the tail down at the back you had an option of either 4LD3 or one pallet.
The way LH configured it, the lower aft hold was used for (working from front to back) toilets, galley lifts, galley, crew rest.
While not totally weightless, these were a lot lighter than 4 cargo pallets which would have otherwise occupied this space.
Cargo dept would try to have a mix of hi density cargo on some pallets, and volumetric stuff on the others so we could load the lighter ones in the front but this was not really possible all the times.
These aircraft ended flying long sectors with the CG close to the forward limit resulting in fuel burn being more than advertised.
For the weight and balance guys, this was a rude shock as they had been used to having A340-200/300 and B747 which were basically quite balanced (combis had left the fleet by then!).
Last edited by Anilv; 8th August 2014 at 09:43.
Reason: corrected A340 to read -200/300