On Sat, 05 Apr 2008 23:16:41 GMT, Jay Maynard
wrote:

On 2008-04-05, Roy Smith wrote:
In article ,
"Mortimer Schnerd, RN" mschnerdatcarolina.rr.com wrote:
Don't let them beat you down. I'd rather fly overgrossed than out of
fuel. My personal fuel rule has become: if I'm worried about it, I
don't have enough.
Same here. I know from experience that the airplane flies just fine a
little bit overgross. I have a pretty good hunch that it won't fly very
well at all with the tanks a little bit under empty.

While this is my philosophy as well, I do have to wonder: if an aircraft is
designed for a particualr gross weight, does consistently flying it over
gross put stress on the airframe that will, in the long term, weaken the
structure?

In aircraft that aren't shipped from the factory with a max ZFW or
MGLW I would suspect that they've got sufficient margins to handle it,
at least for taxi and takeoff if kept well within normal manuvering
laods and Va when appropriate. I wouldn't want to land it over MGWL
or MGTW, whichever is lower. But that's just one person's opinion.