Widebody Transport
Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP)
Workload; Troubleshooting; Confusion; Communication Breakdown; Training / Qualification
Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Weight And Balance
Flight Crew Took Evasive Action; Flight Crew Became Reoriented
Manuals; Chart Or Publication; Procedure
We picked up the aircraft during the enroute fuel stop. All though we did not know it at the time; the aircraft was loaded to the extreme forward end of the Center of Gravity (CG) by the foreign gateway where the aircraft flew in from. After fueling we waited for the new Weight and Balance (WB) to arrive. Took much longer than normal; during this wait we got an ACARS from Dispatch indicating that we were going to have to put 1;000 LBS of ballast in the upper auxiliary to make the WB work out? We then found out that the aircraft was very nose heavy and could not understand why you would want to move the CG even further forward...! Inserted the 1;000 LBS ballast in the FMS; and in the proper location; then had a quick look at AOM regarding ballast procedures. (I'm not too sure if I've ever done this before; or maybe once in the sim?)     What I find confusing is that all references in the FOM seem to indicate that this is only for the ferrying of empty aircraft; and with 25;000 LBS in the upper auxiliary. Now I'm aware of the recent bulletin the ballast can now be less then 25;000 but still concerned that this is being done of a flight with a big load of cargo. I call Dispatch on the SATCOM and we discussed this. It seems that this has happened several times in the recent past on this exact leg. I asked about the 7.5/1 fuel thing as I believed I understood it to mean that in this case the aircraft would not do 7.5/1 on the ground but Tail Fuel Management (TFM) would work in flight. I'm not trying to blame anyone here; as it turns out I didn't fully comprehend what I was looking at in the AOM. He felt the same way as in the past when this has happened no 2.7% extra fuel burn was generated.    Finally after a 70 min delay we got under way. Well; as we now know TFM is not going to work with any ballast so I messaged Dispatch and told them; they sent a corrected fuel burn (Which I had done myself and concurred with). Prior to departure I had loaded 3;000 LBS extra due enroute thunderstorms; so as luck would have it that was about the exact estimated fuel overburn. (Ended up overburning only about 1000 +/-)    My real concern here is over how and why are we doing ballast with a fully loaded aircraft? I feel if this is to continue we should have some more *clearly* written guidance on this; both for the flight crew and Dispatch.
A cargo flight Captain questioned the Tail Fuel Management weight and balance correction procedure for an aircraft with an extreme forward end load after it had flown in from a foreign station at a high gross weight.