PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - Airliner balance question
View Single Post
Old 19th Aug 2015, 13:19
  #17 (permalink)  
Derfred
 
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: Brisbane
Posts: 265
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
The 737-800 becomes tail heavy about halfway through disembarking through the front door.

This is because from the overwings aft, there are still 90 odd passengers and the forward dozen seat rows are empty. Particularly if the guy at row 13 blocks the flow of passengers organising his bags, resulting in 9000kg of passenger weight aft of the main gear and zero passenger weight forward. The nose wheel oleo can lift enough to trigger a PSEU warning light (due air/ground logic), although I've never heard of one tipping.

The first time this happened to me, I called an engineer with the ground horn to query the PSEU light - he eventually came on the mike apologising for the delay because the nose was so high he couldn't reach the headset socket - admittedly he wasn't a tall fellow.

The effect is probably not so pronounced on twin-aisle aircraft because more passengers fit in the aisles, but for the this reason I would doubt that disembarking through the rear door of a 747 would increase the aft movement of C/G - probably the opposite.

Last edited by Derfred; 19th Aug 2015 at 13:29.
Derfred is offline