SWA Weight Restriction?
 

I use SWA quite frequently to get myself to and from home/work. Ya'll are always very accommodating and it is much appreciated. That being said, due to the sometimes low frequency of flights, I have run or almost run into problems regarding the plane being weight restricted. It seems to happen with a variety of 73 models with seemingly no rhyme or reason. It's happened in good weather going from airport to airport with not particularly short runways and seemingly no ALT. I was wondering if it was something that is specific to SWA or the models you fly. Other carriers that have 73's don't ever seem to run into these problems. I don't know if there is anyway to better anticipate the issues but if there is I would be curious to know. Thanks, and once again thank you for all the past and future hospitality!

This is currently being discussed among all pilots, and especially commuters who share your pain.

There are some training issues that need to be worked out and some captains and ops agents that are apathetic to the plight of the commuter. The weather recently is also a factor.

I will let the more experienced hands comment further, but I sincerely hope that this practice stops and common sense prevails. It pains me to hear about any commuter left behind because we are "weight restricted".

Purely out of curiosity, what are the "training issues" that you allude to?

New people in a lot of positions right now. This too shall pass. In the meantime, try to talk to the crew if you can. It shouldn't be happening.

I can't remember 1 single time when the crew was involved that we couldn't get a jumpseater on due to weight. The key to that equation is the crew being involved. If the gate agent has a notice that there is potential for a weight issue and the flight is full, sometimes they do not go out of their way to get the ops agent involved to investigate bin weights and the crew involved to help problem solve. The moral of this story, if you see a crew member let them know you are trying to catch a ride. Ask the gate agent or the ops agent to let the crew know you are trying to get on. If we don't know we can't help. Most of our agents will go the extra mile to help but not all. If you can convince someone to get the crew involved we can almost always accommodate a jumpseater.

I have heard that some ops agents will have a flight that exceeds 2,000 # over flight planned weight. When that happens, they are required to call Dispatch. Some treat it as a limit. Wondering if this happened. Unless the crew knew about the JS, they would have never known there was a problem.

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I use SWA to commute as well. It seems the -300s have this weight issue quite frequently, especially if an ALT is required. I've begun looking at whether its a -300 or an NG to plan my commute.

A 300 is more likely to have a ATOG limited by LGW. Both the 700 and 300 at the MZFW, you can only have 7.5k of fuel for landing.


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Simple solution. Make the J/S part of the BOW like we have at Delduh. Takes the lazy or jealous load planner out of the equation.

Here's a better solution, retire those old pieces of sh-t.