Symon

The DH8D is very trim sensitive, it is an extremely long aeroplane, but when it is full up with pax it is not so critical, more critical the less passengers you have on board. Moving 2 passengers makes a big difference but if this was indeed a Flybe DH8D then I am rather surprised the overweight couple were asked to move.
The way it works is that the CC passes us a trim sheet with the passengers sat in what bays (bays a-d, it’s split into 4 sections), and these passenger numbers in each bay must tie in with what’s on the load sheet, if it doesn’t then we check the MACTOW (where the CofG is), if it’s aft or foward then it’s fine as long as everyone are seated correctly, if not then it either helps us (forward MACTOW and passengers have moved back or visa versa) or it doesn’t (forward MACTOW and passengers have moved forward or visa versa). If the latter is the case then we need to consult a manual weight & balance sheet in the QRH and work out whether they can stay where they are or be moved. What we won’t do is ask the CC or dispatcher to move the fat people in row H etc. We just ask for “2 people” to move.
End of the day we work on average weights for male/female/infant, so it’s irrelevant how large or small they are.
Of course we do get people asking if they can move, if they want to move from Bay d to a then as long as the MACTOW isn’t near the forward limit we allow it. (& visa versa)

Rgds

Dean

Oh yes!! Experience this all the time, its especially a problem when you get all the pax pre booking their seats, and they generally all choose to sit at the front! Can be an even bigger problem on the Embraer 145, but we won’t go into that! Have had to move 6 or 7 pax on a Dash 8 before to get it ‘in trim’, not nice for us, the passengers or the crew, but that’s the way it is unfortunately.