Manufacturers/designers of all aircraft equipped with a pallet/container capability have provided a means of linking the ground loaders/elevators with the aircraft sill for the smoother transfer of pallets and containers into or out of the aircraft holds.

Use of the aircraft attachment points may be used as a means of averting damage to the aircraft door frames and other important parts. Latch-on guarantees fore and aft and vertical alignment of the loader bed with the aircraft doorway, when used in conjunction with the appropriate ground equipment.

This SAE Aerospace Information Report (AIR) has been prepared by SAE Subcommittee AGE-2A to present a review of the current range of aircraft attachment points on wide body aircraft and those narrow body aircraft with a ULD cargo capability. Airline operators, who utilized these facilities, have been faced with a growing number of adaptor bars necessary to suit each type of aircraft and door position. There is also a stowage problem on the elevator compounded by the increasing number of bars necessary to suit each aircraft. Some measure of standardization is obviously desirable.

The adapter bars which have to be fitted to the forward face of the elevators to suit each different type of sill attachment are very heavy and present some handling problems to operators.

Where the same elevator services different aircraft types, these bars may have to be changed many times each day on the ramp.

Alternatively, elevators have to be restricted to servicing specific aircraft types or to those aircraft where a common attachment point already exists.

Purpose:

The purpose of this document is to provide detailed data of the aircraft attachment points at each door position capable of loading pallets or containers on the current aircraft and on new aircraft, where known.

Aircraft designers may utilize this information to enable future designs to fall into one of these categories with a view to keeping the range of elevator adaptor bars to the present level.

The design of the aircraft attachment points is governed by sill design. Two types of attachment provisions for latch-on fittings are available as follows:

Special fittings in the vicinity of door latch fittings.

Special door latch fittings (spools) as approved for use by the airframe manufacturers.

Ground equipment design objective should be to attempt to incorporate latch-on capability of two or more sill types on their adaptor bars.