Baggage Weight
 

What are the rules for calculating standard baggage weights and who is responsible for them? If a foreign carrier flies out of the UK does it follow UK laws, its own nation's laws or the most restricting of the two?

What I would like to know is whether it's possible for an airline to realise that actual baggage weight is sometimes too heavy to be in limits for their aircraft and so choose a slightly lower standard weight to solve the problem.

Many thanks for your help on this interesting subject

:8

Skut.

Skut,

As far as I am aware, the responsibility of the standard weight is determined by the individual carrier usually the ops standard dept. Unlike a freighter the weight and balance for passenger aircraft is really the closest estimate weight you can get. In regard to standard baggage weight usually only apply when the load controller is doing their weight planning. When they close up the flight the weight used usually is dividing the total weight by number of pieces to give them an average baggage weight for the calculation. Should there be any overweight baggage it usually reported to the Load Controller in advance before the load plan complete. Most people just interest in getting it in trim, within the limit and let it go. I used to do some weight and balance for our company aircraft when on diversion, or like Paris the strike of the handling agent means extra work for us in the ops room.

There may be other way to work out the weight, I am not an expert on this topic but hope the above info would be of any help.

:ok:

Skut,

if your carrier is operating according JAR OPS, I would not be surprised, if you found something like JAR OPS 1.620 in your OM.

For further reference please consult ...

http://www.jaa.nl/section1/jars/42/20/422099/422099.pdf

Cheers
fcit

Thanks for your replies, lots of information from your link fcit.

Presumably a carrier from a non JAR country must comply with its own authority's rules but must it also follow JAR when operating a flight from here (with regards to baggage weight)?

Skut,

When I was in load control we were governed by our Ops Manual for standard weights. This was then approved by FAA.

The standard weight used also dependant on region as some flights on average heavier than US domestic flights. Every now and then the company would do a baggage audit on particular flights to maintain correct standard weights used.

All flights from US and the return used same weights. Europe for example was 30lbs per bag. US domestic I believe is 25lbs.