Idea for the airlines

[wolfie]

On various forums, I've heard about problems when a "person of size" buys a single seat and overflows onto their neighbours. Also, excess baggage fees are going through the roof. Recently (I believe it was on Consumerist), I saw an item about weighing passengers - with privacy concerns about their weight being seen by others.

Why not weigh the passenger COMPLETE WITH THEIR LUGGAGE? Each ticket allows you one checked bag up to X pounds, one carry-on that must fit the "sizer" at the gate, and a total (passenger and luggage) of Y pounds? Excess weight gets billed per pound at a rate where a 50% overage would equal the price of a full-fare economy ticket. If someone happens to see the scale readout, it's not revealing YOUR weight - for all they know, you could have a suitcase full of bricks.

If someone buys 2 tickets because they've got a lot of overage, the system "links" them, and the passenger gets put in a row where the armrests can be folded up (leaving a double-width seat). They also get a second checked bag, and a second carry-on (since each seat is allocated space for a carry-on).

This would take away passenger "leverage" that it's discrimination against the obese, since overweight fees would be based on the TOTAL of passenger and luggage - after all, it doesn't matter in terms of fuel consumption whether your excess weight is in the cargo hold or around your waist.

[Seshat]

That's not a bad idea: with the proviso that no individual piece of luggage can exceed the safe lifting weight for the baggage handlers.

Also, the plane (especially small planes) can need to be balanced, weight-wise. If the majority of the mass is in the tail, for example, the plane will have a tendancy to drop at the tail. Also a problem if the majority of the mass is in the nose.

I think that whoever's responsible for ensuring that a plane's mass is balanced has a perfect right to know my approximate weight. Or even my exact weight. I'd rather they know my mass than be in a plane that's tail-heavy (or nose-heavy, or right/left-heavy, or whatever).

Privacy schmivacy, this is a safety issue.

Sure, noone other than the pilot or lead baggage handler or whoever-it-is who manages loading the planes actually needs that information. But that person at least needs to know the cumulative mass of the passengers in the tail section, vs wing section, vs forward section.
Especially in small planes. What can average out nicely over 200 passengers isn't nearly as likely to average out in 12.

[Chromatix]

Many transport-class aircraft these days have weight sensors in the landing gear, so the crew knows immediately if there's a weight-and-balance problem. Such a problem is usually solved by rearranging the cargo hold, or more rarely by reseating passengers (which is much more likely in a nearly empty flight than a chock-full one). This certainly applies to all modern widebody jets.

In the days before this technology became ubiquitous, however, the estimates were performed by choosing a "standard" weight for a passenger plus their baggage allowance. Obviously-overweight bags were weighed specifically and not counted as part of that estimate. There were several accidents where the *estimated* weight and balance turned out to be seriously at odds with the most likely reality (as determined by the subsequent investigation) - for example, where a small airline on a military charter used business-traveller estimates (which are on the light side) for military personnel with all their equipment (which weighs a *lot*). Most of the time there wasn't a problem; then some second or even third factor shows up (such as ice on the wing) where the reduced margin of safety proved catastrophic.