By: Ehud Gavron

Ehud Gavron — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 07:33:33 +0000

I guess it should be part of each preflight passenger briefing to explain that a rough weights&balances calculation has been performed, and that if any passenger has “falsely indicated” a weight that doesn’t represent his or her portion, the envelope is in danger. That might alert would-be hijackers to the “Oh shoot, we need to tell him we’re going to be picking up three escaped prisoners after we’ve consumed fifteen gallons of fuel” part.

You’re taking off on a cross-country flight lasting thirty or more minutes. On board you have 100 gallons of JetA. You intend to overfly a prison at exactly 1630. Which of the following is true:
A. We are within the weight tolerance and in CG
B. We are within the weight and CG tolerance but we’ll pick some guys up and they’ll stare out the left windows so we’ll be at close lateral CG limits.
C. We are outside tolerances
D. We will be removing hardened criminals from custody and hijacking the aircraft. We don’t need no stinking W&B CG calcs

If they answer B or D prior to a flight, that’s as good as a clue…

Ehud

By: Filip Defoort

Filip Defoort — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 02:07:02 +0000

Couple of things that are really interesting to me re. the recent case in Belgium:

1/ the helicopter pilot was able to squawk 7500. Good thinking and brave considering the gun to his head!
2/ the helicopter pilot refused to take off after the three inmates had boarded his aircraft because of weight issues. So after some back and forth between them, they decided to leave the man that came to rescue them behind in the prison courtyard (where he was promptly arrested — but I guess one serves less time for hijacking than for murder).
3/ some red lights really should have gone off at the FBO when the couple insisted on flying over Bruges at exactly 4:30 in the afternoon. Obviously hindsight 20/20, but I guess something to keep in mind for FBOs.

Cheers,
- Filip

Comments on: Infamous flights

By: Ehud Gavron

By: Filip Defoort