Definition
Goods, freight, or other items (excluding passengers, baggage carried as part of passenger service, and required crew or equipment) carried aboard an aircraft, the weight of which must be accounted for in the aircraft's loading and weight and balance calculations.
Plain English
The stuff being hauled in the aircraft — boxes, freight, equipment, or anything loaded on board besides the people flying and their personal bags. Its weight has to be counted when working out how heavy the aircraft is and where the weight sits.
Context Anchor
You will see this term when calculating aircraft weight and balance, loading baggage areas, or deciding whether an aircraft is within its allowed limits before flight.
Derivation
From the Spanish 'cargo,' meaning 'a load,' from the verb 'cargar' (to load), which traces back to Late Latin 'carricare' (to load a wagon). The word has always referred to what is loaded onto a vehicle for transport — the same idea applies in aviation today.
Why Pilots Care
Unaccounted or poorly positioned cargo can shift the center of gravity, exceed maximum weight limits, or degrade climb and landing performance.
Intuition Check
Cargo does not only mean large freight on a cargo airplane. In this context, it can mean any non-person load carried in the aircraft, including boxes, supplies, or baggage-like items.
Example Sentence 1
Before departure, the pilot recalculated the weight and balance after adding 80 pounds of cargo to the rear baggage compartment.
Example Sentence 2
Heavy cargo loaded in the forward compartment helped keep the airplane within forward CG limits.