Ryanair - Empty rows

[pacman1]

Silver993tt said:

IM NUTS2 said:

Depends on the Airline as some have the preliminary load sheet prepared before flight and the Central load control will block seats and put bags in different holds to balance the aircraft.

Trust me a lot of preparation goes in to balancing the aircraft before it's even arrived but Ryanair have a standard loading to allow the 25 min turn around.

Also a 737 is not just a 737 as it looks to some a 200 series compared to a 600/700 or 800 all have different CoG and require different loading it also depends on the cabin, crew and catering configuration, there are so many factors to take in!

I've flown on all 737 variants from 200-800 series but never seen seats blocked off (especially in the 1st 10 rows) on any of my flights over the last 23 years. The hold may well be balanced but using empty rows has never happened on any of my flights.

I've seen it on Ryanair and Easyjet flights, usually 3 rows of three, ie 9 seats. Always annoys me, I'd much prefer to sit nearer the front. I don't quite understand the CoG reasoning though, surely the cargo weight distribution can vary substantially, no two parcels are the same.
And what about fat passengers? Who was that comedian some years back, "..roger that Buffalo Airways, take it out to runway 13 and give it your best shot!"

Edited by pacman1 on Friday 11th February 19:33

[IM NUTS2]

Silver993tt said:

I've flown on all 737 variants from 200-800 series but never seen seats blocked off (especially in the 1st 10 rows) on any of my flights over the last 23 years. The hold may well be balanced but using empty rows has never happened on any of my flights.

You may not may not have seen them physically blocked off but load control will have blocked them in the system so people can't check in to them. But as Ryanair has no such system they use a standard loading so block seats (up to 6 rows at the front 4 rows at the back) and have all the cargo in one hold (Hold2). The less holds used the faster the turn around.

Also some airlines carry cargo and Ryanair don't so you may have a light passenger load but a heavy cargo load o that will play in to it. like i have said it's a lot more factors than you can see.

I appreciate you have flown 20-30 flights for 23 years as a passenger and i used to do about the same amount (not 23 years) before i worked in aviation, but TBH you need to spend a week shadowing in Ops and Dispatch to understand just what go's on and ways of balancing at aircraft. If you came out on the ramp with me for one turnaround it would be a blur! i know it was for me.

Edited by IM NUTS2 on Friday 11th February 19:55

Edited by IM NUTS2 on Friday 11th February 19:56

[IM NUTS2]

pacman1 said:

I've seen it on Ryanair and Easyjet flights, usually 3 rows of three, ie 9 seats. Always annoys me, I'd much prefer to sit nearer the front. I don't quite understand the CoG reasoning though, surely the cargo weight distribution can vary substantially, no two parcels are the same.
And what about fat passengers? Who was that comedian some years back, "..roger that Buffalo Airways, take it out to runway 13 and give it your best shot!"

Edited by pacman1 on Friday 11th February 19:33

As with all airlines it's worked on an average bag and passenger weight, for Ryanair Adult 80kg, Child 40kg, Bags 10kg so a fat man and skinny man traveling together would fall within the average.

Boeing and Ryanair have worked hard to perfect they way they do it to allow for a fast turnaround.

with regards to the CoG it's all about aircraft performance, to much weight at the front you need more positive trim, to much at the back and negative trim is needed causing more drag in both cases. most commercial aircraft fly 5 degrees nose up foe a clean efficient profile.

Get a sea saw and move some weight around and try and get it level a basic CoG lesson for you! lol

[pacman1]

IM NUTS2 said:

pacman1 said:

I've seen it on Ryanair and Easyjet flights, usually 3 rows of three, ie 9 seats. Always annoys me, I'd much prefer to sit nearer the front. I don't quite understand the CoG reasoning though, surely the cargo weight distribution can vary substantially, no two parcels are the same.
And what about fat passengers? Who was that comedian some years back, "..roger that Buffalo Airways, take it out to runway 13 and give it your best shot!"

Edited by pacman1 on Friday 11th February 19:33

As with all airlines it's worked on an average bag and passenger weight, for Ryanair Adult 80kg, Child 40kg, Bags 10kg so a fat man and skinny man traveling together would fall within the average.

Boeing and Ryanair have worked hard to perfect they way they do it to allow for a fast turnaround.

with regards to the CoG it's all about aircraft performance, to much weight at the front you need more positive trim, to much at the back and negative trim is needed causing more drag in both cases. most commercial aircraft fly 5 degrees nose up foe a clean efficient profile.

Get a sea saw and move some weight around and try and get it level a basic CoG lesson for you! lol

I understand, but I thought that the majority of commercial freight was moved around via passenger carriers. Surely that's a little more difficult to calculate as an even weight distribution? Not all parcels are in a suitcase configuration, so how would blocking off a few seats counteract this?

[Silver993tt]

IM NUTS2 said:

You may not may not have seen them physically blocked off but load control will have blocked them in the system so people can't check in to them. But as Ryanair has no such system they use a standard loading so block seats (up to 6 rows at the front 4 rows at the back) and have all the cargo in one hold (Hold2). The less holds used the faster the turn around.

Also some airlines carry cargo and Ryanair don't so you may have a light passenger load but a heavy cargo load o that will play in to it. like i have said it's a lot more factors than you can see.

I appreciate you have flown 20-30 flights for 23 years as a passenger and i used to do about the same amount (not 23 years) before i worked in aviation, but TBH you need to spend a week shadowing in Ops and Dispatch to understand just what go's on and ways of balancing at aircraft. If you came out on the ramp with me for one turnaround it would be a blur! i know it was for me.

Edited by IM NUTS2 on Friday 11th February 19:55

I used to regularly fly business class on BA 737s. They typically had the 1st 8-10 rows allocated for this. No rows were ever blocked because I often used to move seat when that section wasn't so busy without any issue. More often than not there were people in each row.

Edited by IM NUTS2 on Friday 11th February 19:56

[IM NUTS2]

pacman1 said:

I understand, but I thought that the majority of commercial freight was moved around via passenger carriers. Surely that's a little more difficult to calculate as an even weight distribution? Not all parcels are in a suitcase configuration, so how would blocking off a few seats counteract this?

Ryanair don't carry cargo so it's not an issue for manual load sheets, but take an airline that uses a computer generated load sheet the bags will be an average bag weight but the cargo/mail will be exact weight and the loading will be done from all those weights most of the time the cargo will go in a different hold to the bags. unless it's an LDU container then they will be mixed in the holds i.e container 1 bags, container 2 cargo etc.

[pacman1]

IM NUTS2 said:

pacman1 said:

I understand, but I thought that the majority of commercial freight was moved around via passenger carriers. Surely that's a little more difficult to calculate as an even weight distribution? Not all parcels are in a suitcase configuration, so how would blocking off a few seats counteract this?

Ryanair don't carry cargo so it's not an issue for manual load sheets, but take an airline that uses a computer generated load sheet the bags will be an average bag weight but the cargo/mail will be exact weight and the loading will be done from all those weights most of the time the cargo will go in a different hold to the bags. unless it's an LDU container then they will be mixed in the holds i.e container 1 bags, container 2 cargo etc.

That's interesting, you would have thought, given Ryanair's agressive focus on revenue stream and profit that they would be well into the freight market side of air transport.

[IM NUTS2]

Silver993tt] said:

I used to regularly fly business class on BA 737s. They typically had the 1st 8-10 rows allocated for this. No rows were ever blocked because I often used to move seat when that section wasn't so busy without any issue. More often than not there were people in each row.

Thats because they are 737-400/500 so the front and aft section is not as long as the 737-800 there for the CoG is closer to the wings, again like i have said the cabin configuration plays a huge part of this and as BA use a computer generated load sheet the load controller will place the load according to how many passengers are in business/economy so the cabin loading in economy would be planed to compensate the extra weight in business and the hold loading would be different to a Ryanair.

Also you don't know how many seats in business/economy have been blocked and again they will be blocked by the central load control so check-in can't put people in those seats and you will never know as a passenger as you are assigned a seat number at check-in and the only way to tell is to look at the crew seat plan for that particular flight, on a Ryanair flight you have no assigned seat so they put the tray tables down or connect the seat belt extensions over the isle seats to stop people sitting there.

The other thing with Ryanair is they have a low baggage count due to people not wanting to pay so most take carry-on's and if you can't move bags to ballance the aircraft your only other option is to move people.

It's all to help in a fast turnaround if you know XXX amount of passengers are on the flight use rule 1 and if XX rule 2, regardless of Rule first 165 bags in hold 2 etc etc it works and cuts a lot of extra people out of the loop and keeps the turn around cost down.

And again Boeing and Ryanair worked hard to perfect the way its done for a fast safe turn around keeping costs down and nothing to do with keeping the passengers away from the cabin crew.

Just so you can compare:

BA 737-400 13F 132Y = 145 seats Aircraft length 119ft 7in
BA 737-500 15F 92Y = 107 seats Aircraft length 101ft 9in
Ryanair 737-800 189Y total seats Aircraft length 138ft 2in

In a nutshell the longer the aircraft the further away the CoG becomes and the less people you have the closer they all have to sit to the CoG, So a BA 734/5 to a Ryanair 738 isn't comparing apples to apples!

Edited by IM NUTS2 on Friday 11th February 23:01

[IM NUTS2]

pacman1 said:

That's interesting, you would have thought, given Ryanair's agressive focus on revenue stream and profit that they would be well into the freight market side of air transport.

I know and given the average flight's bag count is low in the 60-80 mark there is a lot of unused hold space one thing I've never understood but saying that cargo can sometimes be a bigger pain than a bunch of drunken lads going to Ibiza!

lowest head count I've had on a Ryanair is to Belfast, 9 passengers and 2 bags they had a choice of 180 seats! lol

[eharding]

pacman1 said:

That's interesting, you would have thought, given Ryanair's agressive focus on revenue stream and profit that they would be well into the freight market side of air transport.

You can't lure a piece of freight aboard with the promise of ultra-low shipping rates, and then charge it a healthy belt for extras. Freight doesn't generally get peckish or thirsty on the flight and hand over large quantities of dosh as a result, and advertisers won't pay you to blast unending adverts at a palette of perishable vegetables to encourage said vegetables to indulge in on-line gambling.

Unless the freight is of the self-loading variety, which expedites loading by being in a hurry to get aboard and get a decent seat, and in a hurry to get off at the far end to make the whole experience as short as possible.

[IM NUTS2]

eharding said:

You can't lure a piece of freight aboard with the promise of ultra-low shipping rates, and then charge it a healthy belt for extras. Freight doesn't generally get peckish or thirsty on the flight and hand over large quantities of dosh as a result, and advertisers won't pay you to blast unending adverts at a palette of perishable vegetables to encourage said vegetables to indulge in on-line gambling.

Unless the freight is of the self-loading variety, which expedites loading by being in a hurry to get aboard and get a decent seat, and in a hurry to get off at the far end to make the whole experience as short as possible.

Spot on!

[pacman1]

IM NUTS2 said:

The other thing with Ryanair is they have a low baggage count due to people not wanting to pay..

So surely they have more space for cargo? Given that you have stated Ryanair do not carry commercial loads, their busines model must be based solely on high passenger numbers and fast turn arounds alone. No wonder they are attempting to get passengers to stand as well during a flight!

[eharding]

pacman1 said:

So surely they have more space for cargo? Given that you have stated Ryanair do not carry commercial loads, their busines model must be based solely on high passenger numbers and fast turn arounds alone. No wonder they are attempting to get passengers to stand as well during a flight!

Cargo means weight, which means fuel, which means money. If you do the sums, reflecting the routes flown and the desired turn-around times to maximise revenue from the primary market (low-baggage passengers), and the sums say you make more flying with empty holds, then that is what you do.

[IM NUTS2]

pacman1 said:

So surely they have more space for cargo? Given that you have stated Ryanair do not carry commercial loads, their busines model must be based solely on high passenger numbers and fast turn arounds alone. No wonder they are attempting to get passengers to stand as well during a flight!

Yep a fair amount but then the more cargo they have the longer loading/unloading takes and you eat in the vital 25mins!

[khaosai]

IM NUTS2 said:

with regards to the CoG it's all about aircraft performance, to much weight at the front you need more positive trim, to much at the back and negative trim is needed causing more drag in both cases. most commercial aircraft fly 5 degrees nose up foe a clean efficient profile.

Get a sea saw and move some weight around and try and get it level a basic CoG lesson for you! lol

5 degrees pitch attitude is way off the mark for most commercial airliners. Its more like 2 to 2.5 degrees. As fuel is used up on swept wing aircraft the trim will change too.

Rgds.

[IM NUTS2]

khaosai said:

IM NUTS2 said:

with regards to the CoG it's all about aircraft performance, to much weight at the front you need more positive trim, to much at the back and negative trim is needed causing more drag in both cases. most commercial aircraft fly 5 degrees nose up foe a clean efficient profile.

Get a sea saw and move some weight around and try and get it level a basic CoG lesson for you! lol

5 degrees pitch attitude is way off the mark for most commercial airliners. Its more like 2 to 2.5 degrees. As fuel is used up on swept wing aircraft the trim will change too.

Rgds.

Sorry let me rephrase that, most commercial aircraft will fly around 5 deg stab trim but can vary.

[mph1977]

pacman1 said:

That's interesting, you would have thought, given Ryanair's agressive focus on revenue stream and profit that they would be well into the freight market side of air transport.

but it takes time to load freight ...

also you wouldn't have even freight loading on the different routes so that would blow the shake and bake load sheets out the water

[pacman1]

Yes, I assumed all passenger carriers had their finger in the freight pie.

[mattdaniels]

IM_NUTS2, eharding - give it up. You should realise by now that passengers who have flown regularly know far more about W+B, CoG, load sheets and safe commercial flight operations than the professionals.

[IM NUTS2]

mattdaniels said:

IM_NUTS2, eharding - give it up. You should realise by now that passengers who have flown regularly know far more about W+B, CoG, load sheets and safe commercial flight operations than the professionals.

Is that last comment directed at me about not knowing the above?