My greetings to all Captains!As far as I understand I can use PMDG and LDS load managers to add both passengers and cargo to the aircraft. Thanks to Internet and AVSIM's Flight Plan forum I can get hundreds of real-world flight plans and load them into FMC to provide more realistic flighting environment.I often use flight data and track logs from FlightAware.com. Sometimes I can see that initial cruise altitudes differ from those I have, i.e. after I'd use load manager and make necessary take-off calculations. I understand this difference as an influence of preflight conditions such as winds, weather conditions and most importantly the PAYLOAD on aircraft's planned flight performance. Apart from the weather data which is available through ActiveSky and other weather add-ons, I would like to ask ***whether it's possible to obtain a real-world payload data?*** As far as I know FlightAware, Red One Aviation and FBOWEB do not provide this information.Also, I know that some load managers like LDS's do not allow precise payload editing except random selections. Is it possible therefore, to edit LDS aircraft.cfg for the above purpose?And the last question. How significant is the effect of payload on airlines' flight schedules apart from aircraft's takeoff condition? Is this effect (if any) tangible in terms of flight route selection, flight level?Regards,Rustam

Highly Unlikely you will get the data you are looking for. Payload data for a flight is commercially sensitive, and can give your competitors an insight into such things as Load Factor (%of seats sold), Cargo load etc.

Hi Mark,Thank you for your answer. You're right. Actually, I had to think about the side effects of my question. But is it possible to get any OLD (2-3 years or more) payload data which would not harm the values of airlines such as their reputation and confidentiality and would NOT be useful for competitor companies? Could anyone who has such data send it to my email address? [email protected] (aviator_from_bina AT yahoo DOT com)Thank you once again.Regards,Rustam

For myself (who has no access to this data ;) )I usually just make up a load factor based on wanting my virtual airline to make money (ie sell enough tickets)Particularly my 744 flights I try to make between 60% and 90% full... and then have about 25kg of bags per pax (cargo weight) and perhaps some extra cargo such as mail etc.I do however change the loading on most flights based on what I feel the route's demand would be IRL... so on buisy flights between big cities, have more than flights to small cities, unless it's a holiday destination in the holiday season, in which case I would load it to nearly max passengers.

I also understand that real world load factoring and balance, etc..., use very sophisticated programs to estimate loads and positioning of cargo and baggage within the cargo holds. I have asked that of one of the VA's that I belong to. They were more than a bit reluctant to give out that data. I suspect those programs are proprietary and closely held.

Yep,You're not going to get a real world flight's payload numbers unless you wwork for that company...Cool site you linked to there, I've been looking for a free flight tracker that publishes the filed IFR routes for a while, thanks!