The Paper Trail

The busiest parts of the summer are already over, and things have quietened down into a more acceptable pace.

I had always planned to do a short post about some of the paperwork involved with each flight from my side of the operation, but now seems the perfect time since Kent Wein has just made a posting about it here; Cockpit Chronicles: Paper makes an airplane fly and Captain Dave's quote at the minute is Donald Douglas,' "When the weight of the paper equals the weight of the airplane, only then can you go flying."

There are various bits of paperwork I have to complete before each flight can depart, some are for my company's use, some are for the airlines' uses and others are legally required documents for each flight. A lot of this is printed on dot matrix printers and telex rolls.

Let's start by talking about the movies, you know the ones involving aviation and it pains you to watch because of the absurdity of it all. Anyway, how many times have you noticed the cabin manager/purser consult the passenger manifest looking for a doctor onboard, or a pilot, of a marshall etc? In my experience, I have never seen any passenger manfiest give anything more than a passengers name, sex and seat allocation and maybe some other supplementary information if they have a medical condition or vegetarian etc. I have never seen anything relating to their occupation or qualifactions. Yet.

When everyone is checked in for a flight, the passenger manfiest or list is printed out, usually on two or three ply carbonated paper. I generally retain one copy to keep with my paperwork,and the rest is handed to the cabin manager for their information and is also possibly required at the destination depending on customs and immigration.

With a widebody flight and maybe 300 passengers, this list can end up being around 5 to 6ft in length so its always a challenge trying to fold up it up into some sort of tidy format that the crew can make sense of. Though imagine trying to do this outside in the wind and rain when you're in a rush, and it quickly becomes a ball of mushy paper.

I've previously talked about the loading of aircraft and how they have to be loaded in specific ways to ensure they remain within safe operating limits. We get this information from a Loading Instruction, another piece of paper specific to each flight that tells us where to load the bags and cargo on each aircraft. It's one of the legally required documents, and has to be signed by the loading agent and kept to, and any deviations from it have to be noted.

This leads onto the next piece of legally required paperwork that the pilots require, detailing the weight and balance of the aircraft. It contains information about the weight of the cargo and bags, hows it's distributed in the holds together with a breakdown of the passengers' weight and distribution, and the aircrafts' operating weights and how it trims. The captain of the aicraft has to sign a copy of it to accept it, and a copy is retained on the ground in our records. Different airlines call this piece different names, and each have their own variation on what's required depending on the aircraft type.

Other pieces of paperwork I have to fill out relate to the bags and cargo being carried onboard the aircraft, and that it has been screened and accepted for carriage according to government regulations and then the airlines' regulations. I also have paperwork that has to filled out during the turnaround that later helps determine what caused the delay if any.

The crew will also pass me pieces of paperwork that they are required to complete, such as security forms, crew names or customs paperwork for incoming cargo or passengers. All of it has to be kept and compiled together to be kept on record for a length of time that escapes me right now, but generally it lies undisturbed for many many months in dark bunkers...

Standard Loading

I had started to write a post about a recent wide body jet I had to deal with in work and about the loading of cargo and bags on it, then realised I better start with an explanation into loading of smaller aircraft.

So you've all seen the ramp guys chucking/throwing/pass the parcel-ing/delicately placing the suitcases into the belly of the aircraft, but have you ever considered it in anymore thought than that? Unless your an aircraft buff/engineer/physicist etc then I hope not but here's a short explanation into what happens.

For example, one of our flights with an A320, with 180 people onboard and nearly all of them having suitcases checked in will result in around 180 bags. At an average of 15kg per bag, those 180 bags amount to 2700kg. That means we have 2700kg of bags to place in the belly holds and that need to be distributed so that the aircraft not only remains in balance, but go one step further and make sure it's distributed to give an aft Centre of Gravity and help reduce fuel burn. Most of the flights I deal with are all lose loaded, the bags are loaded on individually and aren't contained in the big metal bins or Unit Load Devices (ULDs) you'll see on some of the larger aircraft.

On the A320s I work with, there are holds both fore and aft of the wings. The front hold is numbered 1, there is no number 2 hold for reasons beyond me, and then hold 3 and 4 are located aft of the wing. There is also a smaller hold 5 at the tail of the aircraft which we rarely (have to) use. The aircraft in question, without passengers and bags is pretty well balanced, not too nose heavy or tail heavy, so the obvious answer would be to split the bags between the front and back equally. Almost, but that's pretty much what we do.

The standard way we load a full A320 is by putting 1/3 of the bags in H1, 1/3 in H3 and the other 1/3 in H4. So 60 bags each in 1, 3 and 4 resulting in 900kg in each hold. This holds true for when the aircraft isn't full as well, with lighter passenger loads we can still split the bags up into 1/3s among the holds providing the passengers are distributed equally throughout the cabin. 99 times out of 100, this method works fine and if we're feeling adventurous and have the time, we'll co-ordinate with the flight crew to try and refine it to an even more suitable arrangement producing a more ideal CoG.

A321s I don't have a lot of experience with and so I can't tell you off hand the way we usually load them, but we do have to be a bit more careful. The longer fuselage means any weight in H4 or H5 has more of an effect in making the aircraft tail heavy. If you're not careful enough and place too much weight in H3/H4 without any in H2, you'll very quickly find the tail making it's way to the ground and have endless paperwork to fill in as the flight crew berate you, to put it lightly.

For 737s, it varies depending on which series. On the older -300s and -400s, we're generally load around 100-120 bags in H3 and anymore in the front in H2. On the larger -800s, we'll usually fit around 140 bags in hold 3 aft of the wings, and the remaining 30-40 in the forward holds.

For 757s, the numbers are bigger yet again with around 180 bags in the rear split between holds 3 and 4, and then the rest in H2.

Some particular aircraft have their specific quirks about them. For example some aircraft are particularly nose heavy or tail heavy due to modifications, such as those that operate dual role and have a cargo door in the side of the fuselage. We'll always load and unload the aircraft in such a way as to minimise the possibility of it tipping while on the ground, meaning we'll generally load weight in the front first, and start offloading the weight from the rear on arrival. I've had captains call me overly cautious about my order of loading. However, that's easy for them to say, they won't be the one taking responsibility for it if it ends up nose up while sitting on stand.

Anything bigger than these such as 767s, A300s and A330s are in my experience all bin loaded and so get a bit more complicated. At least now the next time you see the ramp guys place some bags in a hold and then moving to the back/front hold before the other is full, you'll have an idea why. Now I can get on with finishing my wide body post...