No wonder tickets cost so much!
I think, based on a half-remembered discussion during my brief experience in the Weights & Balance group at the World’s Second Best-Selling Commercial Jet Airliner Company, that it’s to keep the airplane from tipping back onto its tail. The center of gravity of an airliner is very close to the main landing gear; too much weight in the back and over she goes.
I see this occurring quite regularly now, with my unscientific study being the majority being young athletic males stowing their gear up front and walking to the end of the plane. One could make an observation about this rude and selfish behavior but this is GQ.
And you would be correct. Older Boeing aircraft with rear stair are quite vulnerable to this. Next time you fly a 727(?) notice that the rear stairs remains down until just before pushback from the gate.
Quite a few Airbus configurations are the same way because the planes are tail heavy. Baggage crews are instructed to load the tail cargo hold last after most of the passengers have been seated and buckled in, and the first cargo holds to be emptied upon arrival. It would not be the first time an Airbus went nose up because they got the loading/unloading wrong.
Really? Where does the fuel go? You’d think a full load of jet fuel would more than compensate for a few extra people in the cabin.
I can see distributing passengers for stability during flight. My daughter was just on a lightly loaded plane where the passengers were told they could change seats within a row, but not between rows. And I can understand loading luggage from the front. Do you have a cite for a plane tipping due to a passenger imbalance? I’ve been on way too many 727s that have loaded from the back.
You’re not going to see incidents of tipping when loading passengers, because the airlines follow the manufacturer’s guidance.
However, the tip-up of the 727 cargo in the first picture below is blamed on a “loading error”.
This one is blamed on a windy night, but it shows just how close to tipping a 727 is normally:
Oh, and the fuel goes in the wings, very close to the center of gravity, so it has only a small moment arm.
I’m a frequent flyer, so I get to see it all. On Delta, zone 1 is the first to board. On a two class aircraft, that means the first class cabin plus the bulkhead row boards first. The first class, because, well, duh. The bulkhead row because they have no seats in front of them to place baggage under, so have to put their bags in the overhead compartment, and if they go on last there’s no space.
Then comes the Medallion class flyers, Platinum, Gold and Silver, in zones 2 and 3. After that comes general boarding, with the plane allegedly filling up from the rear. The part that amuses me about this is that they claim that they do it to be more efficient and save time, but every time a flight is more than 20 minutes late they immediately announce all zones, all rows, because they’re in a hurry.
Come on guys, either it’s more efficient, and board that way all the time, or it’s not, and you should admit it.
Here is a column by a Washington Post travel writer discussing the various boarding strategies adopted by airlines.
I recall a more detailed article in the Post within the last couple of years, which delved a little into advanced boarding strategies, with charts and everything. I wish I could find it. (Or maybe what I am recalling is a print package that included this column in addition to other things.)
ETA: I may have been recalling this New York Times article. Oooh! Color graphics! Shiny object!
Tell that to ground support that sometimes makes a game of it at MSP. It’s probably the same crew that has a ground support member who deliberately brings his golf club to work so he can do practice swings on his break in full view of travelers on board aircraft enroute to warm golf destinations.
727s only hold a maximum of 11,500 pounds in each wing, the rest which can be a considerable amount more since they are a fuel hog, goes in the fuselage tank.
I’ve fueled many an MD-80 with a very light passenger load (I’m talking 4 or 6 people) and I had to add ballast fuel to compensate.
And as far as those pictures of the 727s tipping, I’ve seen that first hand when a Delta 727 was de-iced front to back. There was a good amount of heavy snow on the horizontal stabilizer and it went.
Sorry; I was thinking of the 737 and 757, which have fuel in the wings and wing center section.
I’m not that frequent a flier – couple times a year maybe – but I’ve never, ever, seen boarding front to back, with the exception others have noticed of first class passengers and those needing assistance going first. In one of the two times I flew first class, the 1st class section was forward of the entrance door, so we didn’t even have to look at the peons as they shuffled by.
The thing I don’t get is why, if you have a small child, you would want to board early. Kids hate to sit still. Better they should run around in the terminal until the very last minute. It’s not like their seat is going away.