Other Load Planner
Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Weight And Balance
Human Factors; Procedure
After the flight was final a new flight plan and fuel increase of 5200 LBS was put in by dispatch. This put this flight overweight and illegal according to the smart load screen Zero-Fuel Weight (ZFW) and the weight manifest. Because this overweight condition happened after the weights were sent to the crew there was no Automatic notification of the illegal condition. As the load planner I received no notice of the Overweight condition and the color logic in smart load did not change from green to red. The Smart load color was all green with only the plus 1.75 ZFW indicating an overweight condition. The dispatch ran another flight plan that lowered the fuel to make the flight legal. This lower fuel was only noticed by the load planner by the ion fuel message. The fact that a flight could go overweight without any notification to the load planner causes confusion and is not safe. Some kind of automatic notification should be applied when the Flight is overweight after weights have been sent to the crew.
An air carrier Load Planner reported that there was no automatic notification of an illegal overweight condition prior to flight.