Couldn’t they
-burn more fuel?
-find a closer alternate?
-toss crew bags into the tail? (I’ve thrown a green tag on my lunch box before).
-use female weights for the FA (if applicable)
-get rid of an alternate if it isn’t legally required?

I don’t commute, but most of the horror stories I hear from my coworkers are from SKW. It seems like a lot of the time people just aren’t willing to try to make it work. I understand there are times when it truly can’t work but I have a hard time believing that happens as frequently as it seems. There are guys at my airline who have been flying the -200 for 15 years and never had to leave a JS.

Sometimes. I’ve had to do this a few times.
Sometimes you can, sometimes you can’t.
This won’t do anything except reduce the amount of ballast that you need. This won’t reduce the cabin weight as the crew bags are already included in the bow.
Also not a possibility in the SkyWest CRJ w/b program.
Yes, it’s a possibility.

So far, I have never had to leave a jumpseater behind except in extreme cases (for example weight restricted and bumped 20 passengers, and take 0 cargo).

So what I’m picking up on it’s the Skywest weight and balance program and not necessarily the plane? Any other -200 carrier do this? I bumped up on the max landing weight issue a number of times, but never needed ballast. Never!

Most operators of the 200 have added a 100 pound plate to the tail cone that all but eliminates this issue. Skywest has not.

Hmm ok I get it. Thanks word

This is frustrating as hell. I jumped through my own hoop on numerous occasions to get JSers on the deuce but at SKW sometimes (often at some outstations at certain times of the year) it simply cannot be done.

There's no installed tail ballast.

In the old days, with paper manifests, you had the width of a pencil lead to work with.

But with ACARS you simply cannot manipulate numbers that don't work.

BTW, if you really want to blame someone, rather than OO pilots who are almost certainly trying their best to get you on, blame Jonathon Ornstien. Mesa went cheap on MX, and grossly overloaded a 1900 back in 2003... the resulting smoking hole caused the FAA to change pax weights by a large margin. Many commuter planes were designed based on the old weights, so suddenly they were all weight limited and out of CG. One type I flew went from being a 30 seat plane to a 28 seat plane overnight.

Where I fly the 200 we need ballast on occasion with a JS and a light load of cargo, but nowhere near the extent that OO does to get a JS on. The 2 coffee makers and the galley configuration are different than where I work.

APC White Knight defender of OO to the rescue. If this was an industry wide 200 issue, I'd agree. The facts are, the OO CR2 jumpseat is less useful than any other 200 operator, and that's where the issue is.

Last time I did an observation in the deuce, the crew had to request adding 400# of ballast to make it work. It was full in the back, and VFR wx both locations, 1.5 hr flight.

We have more of them than anyone else. Your blanket statements are just simply your own very narrow experience. Again most operators have installed a plate in the tail cone, we have not.