Ryan Air Blocked Seats?
 

Recently flew on Ryan Air for the first time SZG-CRL. Plane was not full but the first 5-6 rows of seats and the last 3 rows of seats were blocked to passengers.

Is this a CG thing? Why?

Thanks

PQ

i believe the first 6 and last 4 rows are blocked for cofg calcs.Ryan do manual loadsheets and have a free seating policy,so when the aircraft pax load is below a certain level the pax have to be sat within these rows,in order to avoid every one sitting at the back-or at the front!which would make quite a difference!


lgw

Nah it's done quite often, though i would think less so on the larger jets like Ryan Air...

I've seen it done quite alot on J41s and similar sized aircraft... our load controllers don't usually do it on anything bigger though!

They do this so they can change the aft and foward trim limits. I think the cabin crew do this automatically to avoid moving the passengers when the flight deck/dispatcher finds that it's out of trim.

load forward hold first
 

Ryanair poicy on loading is to load the forward hold to capacity and then the rear if needed unless they are carrying their own frieght which always goes in the rear hold.
Passengers can be moved to keep CofG within limits but bags can't move:-)

What's the point to load the all baggage on the aft hold is it is better to have a slight nose up attitude? I understand it is time consuming to load baggage on both holds but why not use only the rear one and let pax seat where they want?

Rwy in Sight

My thought as well - or is getting the C of G aft to reduce taildownforce just a Long Haul "thing"?

My understanding is that to load bags into front hold costs less from a handling point of view, as no 'mechanical assistance' is required to load into forward hold on B737. Although as you point out, there will be a fuel penalty due to the extra downforce from stabiliser.

STM

Bear in mind the 25minute turnaround targets. It is alot quicker to load bags into and out of one hold, apparently.

There have been several discussions of this point, always around the CofG issue. But what I don't understand is why it is ONLY Ryanair who do this; Easy and the other free-seating LCCs don't do it, despite operating 737s as well.

I have guessed in the past it was something the Irish airworthiness authorities devised and thus only Ryanair would be subject to it.

EZ Jet doesn’t operate -800 aircraft. The smaller 737s are not subject to center of gravity do to random passenger seating.

The -800 and -900 are subject to localizing, if you will passengers to more of a central location within the aircraft during takeoffs and landings so the aircraft remains within its approved center of gravity envelope.

Ryanair is not exclusive to this seating restriction when the passenger loads are light.

Airlines that have a first and or business section such as Continental Airlines, Alaska Airlines, American Airlines, and Delta to name a few, must block off the last few rows in coach when passengers loads are light even with assigned passenger seating.

This is of course the choice of the airline, but a Boeing requirement.

Why block the last rows of Y section thus making the a/c tail lighter and not the first rows of Y immediately behind the curtains?
Rwy in Sight

Now then, I know nothing of how and why Ryanair load their baggage into the forward hold of the Boeing 737-800 but I can tell you a story about loading DC-10s.

The horizontal stabiliser (tailplane) of the DC-10 has the same span as the wingspan of the DC-3. It was found that if the baggage was loaded from the rear first then the stabiliser took up a much more efficient angle in the cruise and this would save around 1 tonne of fuel on an average London to LAX sector.

From the ground handling point of view this was a pain in the ar*e for the aft baggage compartment was a bulk loading compartment and held around 300+ bags.

The other two compartments took LD3 or LD6 containers.

So, one day I was going to LAX and discovered that all of the baggage had been container-loaded and that the rear compartment was empty. Sure enough, we burned an extra tonne of fuel.

When I got back to Gatwick I went to see Fred Laker in person to tell him that we were wasting fuel. The problem was that we were arriving in LAX at about the same time as BA and their punters were getting their baggage a lot quicker than the Laker passengers simply because the LAX baggage loaders didn't exactly relish emptying the rear compartment of a DC-10 one bag at a time (can't say I blame them).

Therefore this was a commercial decision and I suspect the Ryanair situation is just that.

If they used two holds theyd need staff on both holds as well.

Have seen this many times I have flown FR, just thought they were being awkward to those who do the 100yrd dash to get to the front rows.