Originally Posted by ryane946
I was a stand-by with a lot of seniority. I know there were other stand-by's who were unable to get on. They definately got bumped because of a weight restriction. I have gotten on planes that were booked like 20/24 in first 178/158 in coach. I usually plan about 5-10% no-show factor. Higher for 6AM flights. I have almost mastered the art of flying stand-by, even with 90% loadfactors and busy travel seasons. But when a weight restriction gets thrown in the mix, I can get screwed.
Anyway, thanks for the responses.
This is easy to say and hard to do - but if you can talk to the captain.
Yes the CRJ200 can be weight restricted, it mostly happens when we need an alternate and so we're carrying extra fuel but of course we still need to make the max. landing weight at the original destination. I hear the EMB145 is worse and sometimes is weight restricted even without an alternate. We can also get restricted if there's a lot of international bags (which tend to be heavy and therefore take twice the weight credit for the same size).
Anyway - more times than you'd think we have the gate agent tell us we're weight restricted when we're not - I have no idea who tells them we are or how they get that information. When we hear it we can correct them. But who knows how many times we don't hear about it and the reason we have 47 on board is because the gate agent limited it without telling us. A good gate agent is trying to get as many people on as is legal, sadly in this day and the age the number of bad gate agents is too high.