Cobalt wrote:
If you exceed the MTOW very occasionally for a good reason with due consideration – you decide how important the law is for you, but it is not necessarily unsafe.
If you regularly fly above MTOW as a matter of course – ouch. You have bought the wrong aircraft.
That is a very reasonable way to say it.
Cobalt wrote:
On a personal note – I don’t exceed MTOW in my private flying, as I tend to obey the +2 rule – always have 2 more seats on your aircraft than you need for the full range mission, so you can have the occasional extra friends on board and still go somewhere, but weight and balance is a non-issue on most flights. So I make sure the issue doesn’t arise in the first place.
good one too. Yea, the +2 rule is pretty good for most of our planes.
I would be far more worried about the balance implications.
Many aerobatic aircraft have different limits for aeros than for non aero ops and the handling characteristics can dramatically change depending on how the excess weight is loaded. In the event of icing the effect on the stall characteristics could be dramatic
+1
Mooney flyer wrote:
Otherwise you end up like a dear friend of mine who did not survive his record attempt in a overloaded plane.
I am sure that accident happened in spite of thorough preparation and in cooperation with the authorities.
placido wrote:
I am sure that accident happened in spite of thorough preparation and in cooperation with the authorities.
Yes and no.
The guy was maybe one of the most thorough I knew. But he let himself be put under time pressure, as he wanted to reach Oskosh. So in the last minute, a lot of changes were made and the airplane ended up totally unflyable. He took off, but crashed a short distance later into a housing estate. He held several FAI records with his previous plane, the one he crashed in was totally new constructed and unproven in this configuration. As he was known to be very exact, the authorities gave him a lot of trust and leeway, even though the limits he got from the authorities were a lot less than what they ended up doing. That would not happen in this way anymore today I am sure…
Most 2-seat aircraft are frequently flown overweight, simply because the pilot regard them as aircraft for 2 “standard” persons. Most are 1 adult + 1 child -aircraft. And so those pilots simply adjust to the resulting performance. Done cautiously, that will work. Similarly most 4-seat aircraft are flown overweight when they are used as 4-seat aircraft. However, that limit seems to be more widely known, so that PA-28 and C172 pilots flying with 4 people tend to get remarks about it and so is unlikely to remain ignorant.
Ignorance is probably more dangerous than planned “criminel intent”. If you just expect the usual climb gradient at the usual Vy, what do you do when that fails? Raise the nose further? That is exactly what happened in some overweight take-off accidents. If you, on the other hand, carefully plan for an overweight departure, you obviously have a bad moral, but with skill you can probably handle most of the extra risks. Especially if you are prepared to abandon flight if your usual take-off margins have gone. Although you will have to understand the performance figures well enough to extrapolate them. Some will say that cannot reliably be done, but the laws of physics are fairly stable regardless of the limitations stated in the POH. Accident Investigation Boards know that, and they do it all the time :-)
The problem with ignorance, additionally, is that if you haven’t thought about weight, you probably don’t know much about your CoG, either. And being out of CoG range is something you cannot usually extrapolate your way out of.
The POH is not the bible, but the Limitations Section is.
Techniques, maintenance schedules and engine management change but certified limits are limits. IMHO, unless you’re a test pilot it’s a very bad idea to knowingly exceed them.
Well, my plane is limited to FL175 by POH, and i will always climb to FL180 to stay VMC, but not to FL200. I can well accept though that somebody else would prefer to fly in IMC at 175 though.
I have a colleague who uses to say “lines are for professionals”, usually referring to not landing on the centreline or not taxiing exactly on the yellow line. One could extend that phrase to every line drawn everywhere in aviation.
A professional is somebody who will bend the law just a little bit (500 feet) if that makes the flight safer, IMHO. (But of course i would never agree to that if i was a professional :-))
