I believe the airliner payload weight and balance system could made more realistic and simplified if it adopted the SimBrief type approach follows:
- The Operating Empty Weight of an airliner normally includes the flight and cabin crew weights. At present the system shows additional weights for both pilots, but not cabin crew, which are added to the payload figures… This is inconsistent as you can’t operate an airliner without the pilots or cabin crew, and their weights are not normally considered as payload. So make the empty weight figure an Operating Empty Weight figure and delete the pilots from the payload calculation.
- Adjusting the payload figures is far more time consuming than it should be, as the payload slider does not slide consistently, and if you try to type in the passenger and baggage weights individually the system randomly changes the numbers. An additional problem is that the slider allocates the weights incorrectly, simply dividing the total weight by the number of compartments equally, giving the various Business class cabins the same weight as the Economy cabins and the forward and rear baggage compartments… This causes the CG to move outside limits.
I would suggest that the SimBrief system is used where you simply add the passenger total and for each passenger the system calculates 230 lbs per passenger (175 for the person, 55 for their bags) and adds this weight to the aircraft’s OEW (Empty Weight) to derive the ZFW (Zero Fuel Weight). The passenger weights would be distributed between Business class and Economy cabins in proportion to the number of seats in each cabin and the baggage weights would be added to the front and rear cargo holds in proportion to the total weights permitted in each hold. Thus the aircraft C of Gravity should be maintained correctly. This would be a much simpler, quicker and more accurate system, and as so many flight simmers are using SimBrief it would standardise the weights.
This would also be more consistent with the fuel system, which would appear to allocate the total fuel between the various fuel tanks correctly.