U.S. Airlines May Start Weighing Passengers At The Gate

If getting people to wear a mask was controversial this certainly will be. I think they will up the standard weight allowance to 220 lbs (100kg)

It happens in the Philippines though ? which really caught me by surprise the first time that the Check In Desk young lady said "Please Step Forwards onto the scale to register your weight Sir".

This is going to lead to some interesting videos on social media......

Ok, ill chime in on this from a Aicraft dispatchers point of view..
I was required to flight plan passengers at the FAA average weights for passengers during warm months and cold. This average was 170 lbs. Now we All know that's no longer accurate these days, it was back in the 50s/60s when these regs were drawn up..

I firmly believe many airliners are actually over weight because of this average, I brought this up alot when I worked for a well known regional.. of course w&b is very critical on a smaller aircraft than say a 757.

As to weighing passengers in, it can easily be done at the ticket counter or gate, though that would be pretty late before flight time.

Let's adjust the flight planning average up to reflect real Americans sizes and baggage..

I got wighed in at Dnieperpetrovsk, Ukraine 20 years ago. Fuel was precious there at that time.

This is a daily event in Costa Rica on Sansa. A few years ago, We all weighed in and the takeoff weight exceeded maximums. So? We flew back to SJO sans luggage.
My luggage showed up in DTW 5 days later.

The operational weight and balance of an aircraft is a rudimentary flight safety factor; passengers, luggage, cargo and fuel loading are all controllable elements. Obviously, once the aircraft is airborne the fuel load decreases, but other controllable loading factors remains static.

I find it entirely fair and reasonable for airlines to collect the total operational weight/balance factor of an aircraft. If a passenger(s) physically "sizes out" of the standard aircraft seating infrastructure, (i.e., overhead luggage storage sizing), require them to purchase two (2) seats out of respect for other passengers; but the "passenger of size" must still fit in the aisle space to access the seating and/or inflight facilities.

This proposed "U.S. Airlines" procedure should not be taken as a personal attack on anyone, it's merely an aircraft flight operations safety and passenger comfort/emergency management issue.

Oh, back in the 1950's they weighed us all the time. Baggage scales at the ticket counters and pax scales used to be right at the door of the gates at ATL. Nobody cared.

How about the airlines do it anyway to keep pax from having to deal with morbidly obese people overflowing their seating space and creating discomfort for the innocent pax next to them who expect to have their own space. And the FAA doesn't seem to concerned with fat people blocking emergency exits because they can't fit through them, or cannot contort themselves to get through them. Or block the aisles along with other panicked pax in an accident, etc. Or the fact that the seat attachments themselves may not be able to sustain severe deceleration forces in an accident and the whole row of seats goes flying with everyone in them.

No, the airlines, the airframe manufacturers and the FAA are all completely aware of the obesity problems and everybody wants to look the other way.
Meanwhile, there is still an elephant in the room (or airplane) and real solutions need to be found including legislation which the airline lobbyists have managed to keep at bay for all these years and the corrupt politicians are only too happy to fall in line. Remember, the FAA is a Government agency.

No they won't...they'll increase the weight to something that makes more sense. No one has time to weight everyone at a gate.

This will also require weighing every piece of luggage.

We used to do this on the Grumman Mallard seaplane. Passengers had to state their weight, and if there was any doubt, they’d be asked to step on the cargo scale that had a huge cartoon-style pounds gauge. Particularly heavy passengers were often strategically seated in the middle of the cabin.

About time!

The size of people now!
$19- tickets and $50- luggage fees!

Time to finally even the playing field.

Lot of people here really hate fat people. Y’all aren’t very nice.

Surely, in the alphabet soup that is our federal government, there is someone that knows how much the average american human has 'grown' over the years without requiring each passenger to be weighed, at least for a 200 passenger aircraft, for example. The airlines could tweak their figures accordingly.

That being said, I flew for a commuter airline in the early 80s, twin Cessnas. Each passenger had to check in at the counter. Unknown (I think) to the pax, they were standing on a scale and his or her weight was only visible to the Agent. My load sheet showed the weights and I could keep the heavyweights out of the rear seats.

Federal weights are wrong. Even in cars where the official number is 150lbs

A comment below from Silent Bob (and a few others) helps make me think this a bit differently; to me it seems there is a significant difference of concerns with passenger weight (i.e. W & B) depending upon the size of aircraft. A 10 or 20 lb. (5% - 10%) adder per person on a 19 or 50 seat aircraft (190 – 1,000 lbs) likely is more significant as a percentage of overall weight vs. a 150 – 200 seat aircraft (1,500 – 4,000 lbs) or larger aircraft. Also, a larger aircraft permits the people inside to mover about (front to back) more; i.e. ARM changes on a larger aircraft of 1 row of seats less significant vs. smaller aircraft for CG.

A comment here before I forget, I am thinking the airlines may be more concern about this from lost revenue (i.e. money) from reducing cargo / freight vs. paying passengers....

Using what public (Wikipedia) info I can find for a few representative aircraft here are how I figure (use your own numbers if you know better info) some numbers; also adjust the representative plane as you see fit:

Caravan: Capacity of nine passengers or 13 with FAR Part 23 waiver and Gross weight of 8,000 and Fuel capacity of 2,224 lb

ATR 42 (600): Seats 48 and Max TOW 41,005 lb and Fuel Capacity of 9,921 lb.

E175: seats 88 @ 29" and Max TOW 89,000 lbs. and Max Fuel of 20,580 lb

737 MAX (900): seats 193 (more typical number used here) and Max TOW 177,000–194,700 lb and Max Fuel of 6,853 US gal (6.8 lbs / gal  46,600 lbs )

A330 (300): Seats 300 (more typical number used here, though 440 listed as max) and Max TOW of 533,519 lb and Fuel capacity of 240,712 lb

Using a 10 lb. and 20 lb. adder per person at the listed capacity and comparing the percentage of this difference to the Max TOW weight for the aircraft yield the following percentages for WEIGHT only:

Caravan: 130 lbs. / 8,000 lbs = 1.63% and 260 lbs. / 8,000 lbs = 3.25%

ATR (600): 480 lbs. / 41,005. = 1.17% and 960 lbs. / 41,005 lbs. = 2.34%

E175: 880 lbs. / 89,000 lbs. = 0.99% and 1,760 lbs. / 89,000 = 1.98%

737 MAX (900): 1,930 lbs. / 177,000 = 1.09% and 3,860 / 177,000 = 2.18% (Note: lowest of MTOW range) or 1,930 / 194,700 lbs. = 0.99% and 3,860 / 194,700 lbs. = 1.98% (Note: highest of MTOW range)

A330 (300): 3000 lbs. / 533,519 lbs. = 0.56% and 6,000 lbs. / 533,519 lbs. = 1.12%

As demonstrated by this trend, any change increasing the AVERAGE weight of the passenger clearly impacts smaller aircraft (in general) significantly more. As I do not have info on the ARM used for any of the aircraft, but previously comment (correct me if I am wrong or if you have info provide it please…) about moving passengers just 1 row, the ARM will be far more impacted again on a smaller aircraft vs. a larger aircraft on where passengers sit. This also holds for the cargo (luggage and paying freight – money making for carriers); Silent Bob comment thinking….

What bugs me though, is the numbers I present here only has 3.25% as about the worse case scenario for adding 20 lbs. Now I know the change on the Caravan gets multiplied by the ARM will impact the CG far more vs. the other aircraft, by how much more I do not know. But just 3.25% makes me wonder about how accurate the rest of the weights (i.e. luggage, freight, food and drinks on board….) are estimated.

Would really like if someone has some ARM numbers and can provide some estimated / typical CG calculations with any change in passenger weights.

Couple years ago I was on some smallish CRJ variant for a flight to a city in the oil patch (west texas and into NM).

Usually passengers on any flight I get on look like a semi-random sampling of humanity; some young, some old, men, women, some big people and some very petite people.

I think there might have been one woman on the flight. The rest was all male, most of them in their late 20's to 50's, and all looking pretty much like what a stock photo search of "oil rig worker" would return: Large and muscular.

I gave W&B a bit of thought as everyone settled into the more-cramped-than-usual commuter jet, but I know that these are workers who make this flight either weekly, or every other week. I'm not a fan of commuter jets (esp when both people in the front office look like they'd get their ID checked at an R-rated movie), but I have to assume that with this being pretty much the default load for this route, the airline would have noticed if expensive puddle-jumpers were either unable to take off, or went into an uncontrollable nose-up.

When you have to trust in either competence or desire for management to keep their bonuses at 100%, count on management.

Not just the passengers but also their oversized suitcases that they carry on. Most are larger that the cases that I pay to check.

Big fail. Especially with the visuals we saw with the no-masker crowd in the US. I do remember flying United Express and being moved around on those Jetstream planes like the counterweight on a scale to help balance the load. Those were the days, watching the folks load the plane and realize how comfy it was going to be :)

Checkout "Customer of Size"
https://www.southwest.com/html/customer-service/extra-seat/?clk=GFOOTER-CUSTOMER-COS

Unfortunately, all of the women lied about their weight! Have to have actual scale.

As if boarding time isn't a pain already. This will add to delays in boarding. How is southwest going to accomplish this when the weight is not assigned to a specific seat?

Wait until the fat shaming and sexism lawsuits arrive.

I was often told where to sit when flying some of the commuter aircraft in order to be compliant with W/B. I used to work with and travel worldwide with a man that was enormously huge and heavy. He would convince the ticket agent to declare the seat next to him as broken so it would not be sold to anyone. Then once the flight crew were done with the seat belt demonstration he would ask for the demonstrator belt so he could use it as an extension in order to get the seat belt to wrap around his very large belly. It's people like this they need to send directly to a wing seat or close to wherever the CG is located.

Why not weigh the entire aircraft? It’s easy to install such a device as they use to weigh garbage trucks at every landfill station. Not for every flight, but for a period to establish the actual error margin. At least it’s kinder to the obese passengers ;)

I REMEMBER THE OLD CHARTS FOR AVERAGE PASSENGER WEIGHTS..YES,PEOPLE ARE GETTING HEAVIER,BUT A LOT OF THAT IS NOT PEOPLE BEING "FAT",IT PEOPLE WITH MUSCKLE MASSE..THE ONLY TIME I HAD TO GIVE MY WEIGHT TO FLY WAS THE FEW TIMES I HAVE BEEN ON A HELICOPTER AS THE WEIGHT AND BALANCES ON THOSE ARE VERY SPECIFIC...I UNDERSTAND THE PREMISE,BUT WHY NOT JUST ADJUST THE CHARTS "UP" A BIT FOR WIITGHTS, AND LIMIT THE CARGO WEIGHT AND BAGGAGE WEIGHT MORE??

Ah, they finally figured it out. This is the first step in airfares based on poundage.

HIPPA Law? Boy (or girl...) weighing everyone will surely be a pain individually; i.e. perhaps some type of pressure plates used to take the total weight of people as they walk over it to board the plane or just make plane park on pressure plates and get weight after door is closed and calculate W&B on the spot. Figure a computer would take 30 - 60 seconds to calculate and let crew aware of status - just cost to airports.

Maybe funny if they ask if someone weighting XXX lbs. or Kg willing to be bumped or else plan may not leave the gate. Taking an average based upon chromosomes is just another....