Commercial Fixed Wing
Flight Crew Air Transport Pilot (ATP)
Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Weight And Balance; Deviation / Discrepancy - Procedural Published Material / Policy
Flight Crew Became Reoriented
Aircraft; Procedure; Human Factors; Company Policy
Before departure while at the gate; the flight attendant informed the Captain of 12 open seats in the back of the airplane. We knew we were oversold for the flight so it didn't make sense that we had open seats. We then realized that this was a newly reconfigured aircraft with more seats in the main cabin and the gate agent confirmed she was unaware of this as the info was not in her computer; it still had the old seat count. Once Load Planning and Dispatch were notified; we boarded several more passengers and pushed off the gate. While Load Planning worked the programming changes; the Captain confirmed the fuel was OK with Dispatch. We eventually received a load closeout with the correct passenger count and then we realized that the CG was different because of the new configuration. At that time the realization dawned on us that we had unwittingly flown the first leg with the wrong CG because we didn't know that the planning software had not been updated with the aircraft's new configuration. Obviously; when an aircraft gets reconfigured; make sure the planning software gets updated so that all the paperwork is in order.
A flight crew discovered during passenger boarding that their aircraft has been configured with twelve additional seats; which customer service and load planning are not aware of. This aircraft had flown several legs prior to this discovery and the basic operating weight and CG had changed.