336. Establishment of Clearly Defined Weight and C.G. Tolerances Acceptable to New Aircraft for Benefit of Manufacturers
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Paper
Abstract
This paper was presented at the Twenty-first Annual National Conference of the Society of Aeronautical Weight Engineers at Seattle, Washington, May 14-17, 1962. The problem of communication between the aircraft manufacturer and the airline is often obscured by the absence of clearly stated and well defined requirements. The problem can be aggravated further by such considerations as language barriers, manufacturers and airline attitudes and, above all, lack of opportunity for oral exchanges.
In dealing with an airline customer, the manufacturer of a saleable aircraft type will frequently need to restate the description and the capability of his product and its fitness to mesh with the customer’s requirements while on the other hand, the customer might labor under misdirected notions of just what can or cannot be accommodating.
In the viewpoint of some of the manufacturers, the weight and balance sections of their specifications, deal adequately with needs of any airline in particular and in the option of airlines the opposite may be the case. Who knows the exact or even the cross-sectional opinions prevailing.
An opinion survey might prove meaningful in this regard. This paper includes the results of such a survey. The survey was conducted by the means of a questionnaire mailed to manufacturers and airlines on a world-wide basis. A total of 72 questionnaires were forwarded to aircraft manufacturers, to airlines and to associated and/or governmental agencies. 34 completed questionnaires were returned or 47% of the total contacted responded.
In regard to satisfaction with specification centre of gravity and weight tolerances, the returned questionnaires revealed that 5 of 30 airlines were satisfied with current practices, 12 airlines were looking for improvements while the remaining 13 airlines were non-committal. However, in responding to the questionnaire in general all but 2 of the latter airline had some opinions on the questions raised, so it is legitimate to infer that they were not altogether satisfied. On the strength of the returns it has been shown that the great majority of the airlines favor the introduction of some new thoughts and specification stipulations. Of other respondents, governmental agencies and manufacturers, only one manufacturer indicated a need for improvements.
