Aircraft are only moved on the elevators between the flight deck and hangar deck when empty, ie unfueled and unarmed. Fuelling and arming takes place on the flight deck, not the hangar deck, so elevator capacity has to be measured against the empty weight of the aircraft, not max Take off weight. The Buccaneer's empty wieght was about 14,000kgs, meaning folded it could even ride an Invincible's lifts without problems (capacity 18,000kgs). The Phantom had an empty weight of 13,757 kgs (give or take depending on model) and the Sea Vixen empty weighed 12,680 kg. The Super Hornet comes in at 13,900 kgs, so should fit on Sao Paolo's elevators OK. The Rafale 's empty weight is about 10,196 kgs, with a Max Take off weight of 22,200 kgs.
Foch and Charles de Gaulle have catapult shuttles fitted for dual use, ie both wire bridle and nose tow launching, for the simple reason that whilst the Rafale uses the modern nose tow method, the Super Etendard still to this day uses the wire bridle method for launching. Most US carriers through the 60s 70s 80s and into the 90s were also fitted with dual use shuttles as the in service aircraft used a mix of the two methods. As the older types were withdrawn from service (such as the RA-5 Vigilante, RF-8 Crusader, F-4 Phantom, even the T2 Buckeye) the carriers were progressively refitted with the bridle catchers (trackes and the protruding extension at the end of the deck) removed. The shuttles I believe can still take a wire bridle when cross decking foreign types like the SEM, A4 Skyhawk and S2 Tracker, though I believe the visitors are required to bring their own bridles for launch! And becuase the catchers have been removed they don't get them back afterwards...
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