Max-Gross Weight Ops

My brother slipped me a piece of paper on which he’d jotted three numbers: 260, 240 and 180. If you haven’t guessed, they’re weights. Add me and the load is 860 pounds well-marbled (not 170-pound), above-average Americans. Add full tanks, 56 gallons of fuel and we would approach gross weight. I had yet to add backpacks, fly-fishing gear and food for a week, but after that I’d have to start trading fuel for payload, and worry about CG as well. Welcome to the world of gross-weight ops.

Mike Hart

Tuesday, August 19, 2014 at 12:00 AM ET

Verified

Key Takeaways:

Gross-weight operations severely degrade aircraft performance, particularly takeoff distance and climb rate/angle, posing significant risks related to an unsafe Center of Gravity (CG) and potential structural issues.
While maximum gross takeoff weight (MGTOW) can sometimes be legally exceeded under specific regulatory allowances or supplemental type certificates (STCs), routinely operating above MGTOW without such provisions is unsafe, unprofessional, and exposes passengers to unconsented risk.
Pilots often underestimate the drastic performance degradation at gross weight due to prior conditioning from flying lighter, underscoring the need for meticulous pre-flight planning, patience, and a clear understanding that certified MGTOW does not equate to safe operational capability in all conditions.

See a mistake? Contact us.

For me, the biggest concern in gross-weight operations is an unsafe CG, poor takeoff/climb performance—especially on hot days, at high altitudes and short fields—followed by structural issues (hard landings). If you fly a twin, I suspect single-engine performance could trump any of the above.