airlines cant even hire rampers who can count bags or are too lazy to unload all the bags/cargo. plus with checked bag fees and huge over-stuffed carry-ons I wonder how the structures of these airplanes will last when compared to older aircraft.

Don't know if any of the fines are on the ASA side, but as to the ramp, that is all Delta in ATL, and at a lot of the outstations too.

Yeah, I'm just glad my airplane has the AOA. Nothing like having the approach speed bug in the yellow bar.

FAA fine? That means SKW is one of the big boys now.

Weights? Here's a true story:

As a 727 FE I had a military charter. On charters, the FEs had calculate the weight and balance. On the walk around, I had the military OPS guys ask how I wanted the bags loaded. I said, "Weigh them and put half in front and half in back." Since it was a military base, it wasn't a problem...they simply drove the trucks over the scales and put half in front and half in back.

On takeoff, the Capt turned to me and said, "that trim setting was PERFECT. How did you do that?" "I had them weigh the bags," I replied.

"Well that's probably the FIRST time they've ever been weighed," he replied.

And he was right. Virtually all airline use "estimated" weights for baggage depending on the the time of year. There are summer weights and winter weights. But NO one actually weighs the bags.

The thing that gets me is each airline uses different assumed weights for passengers and bags. So the "overweight" skywest plane could have been within limitations on another airline.

According to the article the airplanes weren't "overweight," bags just weren't accounted for properly. In other words, the bags that came out of the cargo at the destination was not the same number as was recoded on the load manifest.

Wow...can't even imagine what it's like to take-off and not have to immediately trim the crap out of the plane!

At least it was good enough so you could get it off the ground --- and hopefully close to maintaining V2 should you lose an engine after V1