I was wondering if we could get a children pax section. This is important because children’s weights do matter above 2+ years old. Right now you can only enter in PAX and PAX weights but they are one weight which i use as the current FAA winter weight of 210, a Child is 96 LBS. An input of how many children plus a child weight section would be very nice especially when border lining you TOW to MTOW and need all the available weight as possible.
of course if its 189 seater plane and you enter 10 children 179 will be adult pax the 10 will be children weight
That’s an important point for mass and balance calculation, but not so much for flight planning. All (European) airlines I worked with use an average passenger weight for everybody booked, no matter if child, male, or female. If you divide the estimated payload on the flight plan minus cargo and mail by the estimated number of passenger, you end up with an average passenger weight (usually 84 kg) plus average bag weight.
For weight and balance this of course will be considered. Your loadsheet will show you the actual passenger count split into adults and children, or even male, female and children. It also considers how many bags are actually checked in and in many cases their actual weight. Consequently, it is perfectly normal that the estimated ZFW on the flight plan and the actual ZFW on the loadsheet do not match. They should however remain within certain tolerances, otherwise it’s a good idea/requirement to get a new OFP.
See there is a lot of times where we need all the weight we can and adding in those children can save easily a lot of lbs. And make the difference. Children weights mean a lot in planning and cg. Even if it doesnt at some airlines it does for other it renders enough to have the option atleast
Should you need to adjust the payload in this little increments SimBrief allows you to enter the payload (weight) manually. It will not adjust for CG. It would by the way be interesting to know the CG used for the different aircraft profiles, so you know when you need to take a little more fuel.
I would prefer to stick with passengers as one number and keep it in line with probably most flight planning systems. When talking about mass and balance I absolutely agree with you. Use gender split and seat row trim. Try to get the numbers as exact as possible. However, SimBrief is not doing mass and balance.