Plane in Crash Carried Weight Too Forward, Board Says

The New York Times ^ | March 24, 2005 | PATRICK McGEEHAN

[ConservativeStatement]

The corporate jet that crashed into a warehouse in Teterboro, N.J., last month with 11 people on board was carrying too much of its weight in front, federal investigators said in a preliminary report released yesterday.

The National Transportation Safety Board, which is still investigating the crash, said that the plane's center of gravity was "well forward of the allowable limit." Tests on a flight simulator showed that the plane would not have been able to lift off at its normal takeoff speed with the balance of fuel, passengers and baggage it was carrying, according to the report.

[SweetPilotofCanuckistan]

Weight and Balance calculations...pretty simple to do, kids...

[Waco]

Aerodynamic laws don't apply to Blue Staters.

[Sunnyvale CA Eng.]

Pretty simple to do and unforgivable not to. I suspect the pilot(s) will be looking for other employment.

[ProudVet77]

Sadly these kind of numbers are usually taken at the check in counter. The accident happened during the winter when people had heavy coats on. (Done many of these kind of flights). The real solution is to have the passenger get on the scale. But I bet the ACLU will go bonkers!!!!
Al

[Talking_Mouse]

I would go bonkers

[Sunnyvale CA Eng.]

I wonder if anybody has considered putting some sort of an electronic scale that kept a running tab at the entry door - you could get a rough guess of the total passenger weight and make adjustments if the numbers looked like a potential problem could exist. This is probably too tough to implement usefully - if somebody steps on it a few times the numbers would be way off. I guess the current (manual) system works well - providing the data is good.

I have always been surprised at the limited load capacity and balance sensitivity of small planes - from business jets to singles. I used to fly singles and the amount of fuel, people, and cargo that they could carry always seemed very small. The difference in performance was very noticeable with a few passengers and a little cargo versus flying by myself.

[nw_arizona_granny]

Ping

[kylaka]

Better forward of center than aft. Aft will get you 100 feet in the air before it stops flying. In this case, everybody lived to tell the tale.

[Velveeta]

bump

[ladtx]

Particularly since it's required and all done by computer.

[ChinaThreat]

"Better forward of center than aft. Aft will get you 100 feet in the air before it stops flying. In this case, everybody lived to tell the tale."

Good point. I have to fly a lot of Saturday flights on smaller regional jets. Just after 9/11 the flights were so empty, that the attendants would have to ask folks to move to the back of the aircraft. The Canadair RJ has a center of gravity that is near the rear of the aircraft. Many times, no one would respond. I used to think if they only understood what happens when a plane is unbalanced, these folks would be running to the back of the craft.

[Ranxerox]

Better forward of center than aft. Aft will get you 100 feet in the air before it stops flying. In this case, everybody lived to tell the tale.

IIRC, this is how the plane crashed that killed Will Rogers.

[kylaka]

I once flew a Turbo Seneca out of Norfolk VA on a hot summer day that taught me great respect for weight and balance. The plane was 2 inches aft of the CG envelope and 85 pounds over gross weight. I remember the calculations clearly, because I did them three times, and recall that I would have had to remove 6 gallons of avgas from each tank to be within limits. Calculations told me it would require 4000 feet of runway at gross and I had 11,000 so I said screw it, close enough with such a big margin for error.

Well, it took 8000 feet of runway to get off and with a climb rate of 75 fpm, I just cleared the telephone poles at the airport boundary by 30 or so feet. I didn't even want to think what would have happened If I'd lost an engine within the first four minutes of flight. To this day, I don't cheat on the numbers, even by a little. Sometimes it takes a little experience and a little luck, to keep you safe and sound into old age.

[ChinaThreat]

Excellent point.

What is even more tricky are landing calculations. There is a lot of debate among commercial pilots as to the benefits of making a smooth landing and eating up runway or making a hard landing and conserving brake space.

The calcualtions are minimal but have an exponential impact like the flight you unfortunately learned an important lesson on. I have heard pilots running calculations down to 10ths of a degree of the slope of the runway and elevation's effect on air density, but these things can result in necessary deceleration space requirements of 300-1000 additional feet on larger aircraft. 10 ft. can mean the difference between life and death in places like San Fran or New York with larger craft.