Why are load planners a thing?
 

Not trying to stir the pot…an honest question. I fly for a regional and whether it’s jump seating or observing the UA plane sitting off to the side of the taxi way it’s usually waiting for the numbers from load planning.

Our rampers send us their cargo load report and ACARS spits out our numbers for takeoff. Why isn’t this the same at united?

I suspect you have load planners. Who decides what your max cargo load is and where it needs to be loaded on the aircraft? Who decides if you need to limit passengers or cargo boarded and where those loads have to be placed to meet CG and GW limits?
The other factor is that larger aircraft are exponentially harder to load plan. Far more fuel tanks including fuel in the tail on many aircraft and far more cargo loading positions that effect CG. The 330 for instance has 3 different cargo holds and a large number of can positions. You often on long flights have to compromise on cargo, fuel and passengers to reach a dispatch legal solution. Delays in getting numbers are usually caused by delays in getting actual can weights.
it’s simply not as easy as a RJ where you have 45 passengers and 70 bags to input.

And most of the time its because the load planners are waiting for the CSR to close out the customer count or the ramp to send in their numbers.

Perhaps the company can fire all the load planners and assign their duties to dispatcher already working the flight. Maybe hire a few more dispatchers to lessen the workload a bit since they will now have to do the weights. Seems like a money saving idea.

meanwhile load planners are probably saying fire all the fos as the captain can handle everything. Maybe hire a few back for flights over 8 hours to llessen the workload a bit.

United pilots don’t get a load report with the number of bags in the hold or a count from an FA with how many pax are in each zone. We don’t input that into our ACARS like it was done at regional airlines (at least when I was there). We get a final weight manifest that has a ZFW and CG that gets uplinked into the FMC. We don’t even know the number of bags or location, but we do have a pax count. Previous answers accurate too. We need the ramp to send load planning their weights and the gate agent needs to close out so they know where everyone is seated.

I get it though. I never understood why United was always waiting for weights before I worked here…but they want us to push and taxi without them so we’re not needlessly delayed.

It’s all about making DOT on time statistics.

NB take-off data is. It more complex than Regional take off data and could be done the same way (pax sheet and load sheet). But any hick-up will delay the departure

Does United have some sort of exemption that allows their Captains to block out without meeting the requirements of 121.695(a)(1)?

How is the PIC carrying a copy of the load manifest if he doesn't even have it because it doesn't exist yet? I get that you don't have to know the distribution, but you do need to know whats on board...

I would imagine every procedure UAL has is blessed by the FAA.

DG is separate from the weights and must be provided prior to push, if that is what you’re talking about.