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Airlines may start weighing plus size passengers

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  • ninerbuff
    ninerbuff Posts: 48,454 Member
    ninerbuff wrote: »
    Will they raise the prices for the overweight flyers or eliminate the last to board passengers from flying? What a mess that will be.
    It's not about raising the price, it's about how much weight can be allowed on a plane to fly safely. If they don't stop passengers, then the next thing they may nix to reduce weight is LUGGAGE. So your luggage as a passenger on that flight, may come on another plane arriving later.

    A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
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    Not to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but the past behavior of airlines makes me understand why some people might feel like this could be used as a justification for tiered prices based on weight. They haven't exactly acted in a way that inspires confidence that this WOULDN'T be used that way at some point.
    Possibly. They already charge extra for overweight luggage.

    A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
    IDEA Fitness member
    Kickboxing Certified Instructor
    Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

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  • ninerbuff
    ninerbuff Posts: 48,454 Member
    YellowD0gs wrote: »
    So it's been a couple of years since I've flown, but they still charge extra for over-weight luggage, right?
    Yes.

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  • ninerbuff
    ninerbuff Posts: 48,454 Member
    :lol:@ninerbuff

    You need to get back to work.

    The last 10 threads we had on this weren't enough for you?
    Lol I'm at work. Client cancelled this morning. :D

    A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
    IDEA Fitness member
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  • cmriverside
    cmriverside Posts: 33,907 Member
    jjpptt2 wrote: »
    This paragraph makes it hard to take the article seriously...
    To put it plane-ly, the FAA wants to gauge how much fatter Americans have gotten, to prevent things from coming apart when planes take to the skies.

    I'm pretty sure that data is readily available from any number of sources in any number of industries. Pretty sure there are other motivations at play.

    But taking things at face value... if they are just gathering data, then they need to do it on a broader scale. There's no reason they can't put a scale in/under the metal detector "pods" you stand in and collect weight data in mostly real time, without singling out passengers, nor delaying the check-in/TSA/boarding process any more than necessary.

    Exactly, it's a click-baity topic, always has been.
  • Diatonic12
    Diatonic12 Posts: 32,344 Member
    It's about safety. Aircrafts can only lift so much weight to get the airflow over the wings so it can lift off the ground.
  • nooshi713
    nooshi713 Posts: 4,877 Member
    edited May 2021
    There is nothing wrong with this. It is a matter of safety.
  • chocolate_owl
    chocolate_owl Posts: 1,695 Member
    edited May 2021
    dsc84 wrote: »
    ninerbuff wrote: »
    ninerbuff wrote: »
    Will they raise the prices for the overweight flyers or eliminate the last to board passengers from flying? What a mess that will be.
    It's not about raising the price, it's about how much weight can be allowed on a plane to fly safely. If they don't stop passengers, then the next thing they may nix to reduce weight is LUGGAGE. So your luggage as a passenger on that flight, may come on another plane arriving later.

    A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
    IDEA Fitness member
    Kickboxing Certified Instructor
    Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

    9285851.png

    Not to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but the past behavior of airlines makes me understand why some people might feel like this could be used as a justification for tiered prices based on weight. They haven't exactly acted in a way that inspires confidence that this WOULDN'T be used that way at some point.
    Possibly. They already charge extra for overweight luggage.

    A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
    IDEA Fitness member
    Kickboxing Certified Instructor
    Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

    9285851.png

    So I flew just recently, and I've always wondered why they would charge for extra/overweight luggage. I've been in line to check baggage multiple times only to find that the person in front of my was overweight on luggage so they move stuff from that bag to their carryon to avoid additional charges. The weight of what was being placed on the plane did not change, just distributed to a different bag. I finally asked. A big part of this isn't for reducing weight on plane though it does encourage people to think twice about what they bring with them to avoid line delays, but also safety for employees. Reducing the weight of the bag that is handled by airport employees can reduce risk of injury, which is also why they throw that "HEAVY" sticker on over weight bags as well.

    Sorry this may have been a bit off topic. I will say that at the end of the day I feel that safety should come first, but it can start with bags and reducing flight capacity if this is truly their biggest concern.

    The weight limit used to be 70 lbs before incurring a fee, but after OSHA got serious that a single person shouldn't lift more than 50 lbs regularly, that changed across the board. If your luggage is overweight, they're charging you as a deterrent so they can protect their employees, to help offset the cost of maybe needing an extra person tending to baggage, and to offset the cost of an employee injury (or lawsuit). I think there's a charge over 50 lbs and a hard limit of 70 lbs, plus you pay per checked bag to deter you from bringing your whole house with you on vacation, so I don't think putting any more caps on checked luggage is a solution. As far as design calculations go, that's pretty baked in.

    Carry-ons are out of control. You're only supposed to have one stowable bag and one personal item, but I can't count how many times I've seen someone waddling down the aisle with 4 or 5 bags hanging off them, and no airline worker did anything. These never get weighed, so the only constraint is the space they can fit in. Of course, many don't actually fit and end up getting gate-checked for free, so all those deterrents they set up for regular checked luggage have no effect. But the carry-ons are the one "luxury" airlines have continued to allow, so there will be outrage if they start weighing them and charging for overweight bags. There's already a ridiculous amount of grousing and entitlement over not being allowed to bring an oversized carry-on onboard with you.

    Airlines have managed to reduce the number of carry-ons by selling Basic Economy seats. You're not allowed a carry-on with that fare, so while Basic Economy primarily exists to compete with ultra-budget airlines, it also has the effect of giving regular-fare passengers more storage, and it reduces the total weight carried into the cabin.

    What this article doesn't mention at all is that almost all commercial airliners carry freight with them. That box of cookies that you're mailing Express to your Aunt June 5 states away might be going on a Delta flight. If airlines are going to rebalance the weight they carry because people are fatter, they're much more likely to keep packing us in like sardines and give USPS a little less square footage because we pay more.
  • Noreenmarie1234
    Noreenmarie1234 Posts: 7,493 Member
    edited May 2021
    I like the idea. I’d so much rather be safe than take the chance. Maybe it will give people even more of an incentive to lose weight. I know it would make me want to lose weight to not be pulled out and weighed.
  • Theoldguy1
    Theoldguy1 Posts: 2,427 Member
    dsc84 wrote: »
    ninerbuff wrote: »
    ninerbuff wrote: »
    Will they raise the prices for the overweight flyers or eliminate the last to board passengers from flying? What a mess that will be.
    It's not about raising the price, it's about how much weight can be allowed on a plane to fly safely. If they don't stop passengers, then the next thing they may nix to reduce weight is LUGGAGE. So your luggage as a passenger on that flight, may come on another plane arriving later.

    A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
    IDEA Fitness member
    Kickboxing Certified Instructor
    Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

    9285851.png

    Not to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but the past behavior of airlines makes me understand why some people might feel like this could be used as a justification for tiered prices based on weight. They haven't exactly acted in a way that inspires confidence that this WOULDN'T be used that way at some point.
    Possibly. They already charge extra for overweight luggage.

    A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
    IDEA Fitness member
    Kickboxing Certified Instructor
    Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

    9285851.png

    A big part of this isn't for reducing weight on plane though it does encourage people to think twice about what they bring with them to avoid line delays, but also safety for employees. Reducing the weight of the bag that is handled by airport employees can reduce risk of injury, which is also why they throw that "HEAVY" sticker on over weight bags as well.

    Yep employee safety is huge. My boss worked at a small airport while going to school. He's taller and the luggage compartment of many planes doesn't allow one to stand up straight (especially if taller) so especially hard on the back.

    Also, be nice to airport employees. He said it was common practice to route the luggage of a difficult passenger to another location vs where the passenger was going. Like Cairo Egypt instead of Orlando.
  • siyeonsimpp
    siyeonsimpp Posts: 211 Member
    Maybe they'll have a weight limit for both your luggage and your body weight? So that if you are overweight, you have to pack light, that way, they can make sure no one goes over the limit (this is of course if the person themselves doesn't outweigh the limit).
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 31,722 Member
    From the article:

    "In order to update guidelines on “standard passenger weight,” airlines will have to up the weight of an average adult male passenger and carry-on bag to 190 pounds in the summer and 195 pounds in the winter — a 20-pound increase from the current guidelines, Fox reported. Meanwhile, female passengers and carry-on bags will increase from 145 pounds to 179 pounds in the summer, and 150 pounds to 184 pounds in the winter."

    I admit, it's been a while since I've flown anywhere. Last time I did, I checked, and the max weight for a carryon on the airline I used was 50 pounds. Since I was going to a big bead/jewelry event, I was packing a bunch of tools, so my carryon was close to 50 pounds. I'm not a very large woman, these days, at 125 pounds. Right there, that's 175 pounds, and I'm not going to fly nude, so 179 pounds is only marginally achievable in that scenario. 145 is highly, highly improbable.

    Yeah, most people don't have 50-pound carryons (and some of the sweet young men who wanted to help me put mine in the overhead bin didn't think this li'l ol' lady did either, from their body language when they grabbed it 😆😬).

    But still. It's hard to believe those average weights, when carryon (last I knew) allows for not just the (maybe) 50-pound bag, but also a personal item (purse, daypack, briefcase), and the bodyweight of a person who stands decent odds of being overweight or even obese.
    When at a ticket counter checking in our bags on a domestic flight, we were next to a really tall and obese couple. The bags they were checking were the twice the size of ours. I thought the must have some really big clothes in their bag to boot.

    This is sort of an aside, but I was astonished how much less space my clothes took up in a suitcase, when at healthy weight, vs. obese. And I was just barely over the line into obese BMI (BMI 30.4, at 5'5", 183 pounds), not severely obese. I'm gauging this from weekend trips to races, so the quantity/type of clothing was quite consistent, in the cases I'm comparing.
  • GummiMundi
    GummiMundi Posts: 396 Member
    Theoldguy1 wrote: »
    ninerbuff wrote: »
    I heard about this yesterday. Unlike a vehicle or ship, WEIGHT matters much much more when traveling by air. How the weight is dispersed on a plane matters much more than vehicles by land travel or by ship for obvious reasons. For the longest time now, aviation has used an average weight per person to decide on passengers and luggage for capacity on a plane. But with the ever growing waistlines of many, it's becoming more of a concern for safety issues. While a few hundered pounds don't matter as much to other vehicles, with planes is does matter much more.
    So now airlines are possibly looking at random weighing of passengers who likely exceed the average weight. Personally I do see this a couple of ways: it is a safety issue. If they do institute this, they better have a great back up plan for those that they may deem may not be able to board a flight due to weight overload.

    Okay, let's hear it.

    https://nypost.com/2021/05/18/airlines-to-weigh-passengers-before-boarding-airplanes/

    A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
    IDEA Fitness member
    Kickboxing Certified Instructor
    Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

    9285851.png

    I've been on numerous small commuter planes (30 passengers or less) and after everyone was boarded the attendant said they were overweight and asked for volunteers to get off and get a later flight and a travel voucher for their trouble or move people around to balance weight.

    Heck we were even on a Airbus 200 or so seat plane where they didn't fill the last 8 rows because it would have been too heavy for the runway at Maui Airport headed to LA.

    I'm thinking it will ultimately result in a surcharge (user fee) for heavier passengers. But it will be a *kitten* storm.

    I'd be raising my hand even before the attendant finished their sentence. :s

    I understand that if a policy like the one being discussed was implemented, it would raise all sorts of questions and some uproar. But, considering that potentially the plane either lands safely or doesn't land at all, I know which side of the argument I'd support.
  • Theoldguy1
    Theoldguy1 Posts: 2,427 Member
    AnnPT77 wrote: »
    From the article:

    "In order to update guidelines on “standard passenger weight,” airlines will have to up the weight of an average adult male passenger and carry-on bag to 190 pounds in the summer and 195 pounds in the winter — a 20-pound increase from the current guidelines, Fox reported. Meanwhile, female passengers and carry-on bags will increase from 145 pounds to 179 pounds in the summer, and 150 pounds to 184 pounds in the winter."

    I admit, it's been a while since I've flown anywhere. Last time I did, I checked, and the max weight for a carryon on the airline I used was 50 pounds. Since I was going to a big bead/jewelry event, I was packing a bunch of tools, so my carryon was close to 50 pounds. I'm not a very large woman, these days, at 125 pounds. Right there, that's 175 pounds, and I'm not going to fly nude, so 179 pounds is only marginally achievable in that scenario. 145 is highly, highly improbable.

    Yeah, most people don't have 50-pound carryons (and some of the sweet young men who wanted to help me put mine in the overhead bin didn't think this li'l ol' lady did either, from their body language when they grabbed it 😆😬).

    But still. It's hard to believe those average weights, when carryon (last I knew) allows for not just the (maybe) 50-pound bag, but also a personal item (purse, daypack, briefcase), and the bodyweight of a person who stands decent odds of being overweight or even obese.
    When at a ticket counter checking in our bags on a domestic flight, we were next to a really tall and obese couple. The bags they were checking were the twice the size of ours. I thought the must have some really big clothes in their bag to boot.

    This is sort of an aside, but I was astonished how much less space my clothes took up in a suitcase, when at healthy weight, vs. obese. And I was just barely over the line into obese BMI (BMI 30.4, at 5'5", 183 pounds), not severely obese. I'm gauging this from weekend trips to races, so the quantity/type of clothing was quite consistent, in the cases I'm comparing.

    Which doesn't make any sense

    The average weight of American men in 2015-16 was 197.9 pounds; for women, it was 170.6 pounds. This is up from 189.4 pounds and 163.8 pounds, respectively, in 1999-2000.

    https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/20/health/us-average-height-weight-report#:~:text=The average weight of American,respectively, in 1999-2000.

    Pretty small allowance for weight of carry on items. Plus the average weight shown for men and women have most likely gone up since 2015-16.
  • Theoldguy1
    Theoldguy1 Posts: 2,427 Member
    GummiMundi wrote: »
    Theoldguy1 wrote: »
    ninerbuff wrote: »
    I heard about this yesterday. Unlike a vehicle or ship, WEIGHT matters much much more when traveling by air. How the weight is dispersed on a plane matters much more than vehicles by land travel or by ship for obvious reasons. For the longest time now, aviation has used an average weight per person to decide on passengers and luggage for capacity on a plane. But with the ever growing waistlines of many, it's becoming more of a concern for safety issues. While a few hundered pounds don't matter as much to other vehicles, with planes is does matter much more.
    So now airlines are possibly looking at random weighing of passengers who likely exceed the average weight. Personally I do see this a couple of ways: it is a safety issue. If they do institute this, they better have a great back up plan for those that they may deem may not be able to board a flight due to weight overload.

    Okay, let's hear it.

    https://nypost.com/2021/05/18/airlines-to-weigh-passengers-before-boarding-airplanes/

    A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
    IDEA Fitness member
    Kickboxing Certified Instructor
    Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

    9285851.png

    I've been on numerous small commuter planes (30 passengers or less) and after everyone was boarded the attendant said they were overweight and asked for volunteers to get off and get a later flight and a travel voucher for their trouble or move people around to balance weight.

    Heck we were even on a Airbus 200 or so seat plane where they didn't fill the last 8 rows because it would have been too heavy for the runway at Maui Airport headed to LA.

    I'm thinking it will ultimately result in a surcharge (user fee) for heavier passengers. But it will be a *kitten* storm.

    I'd be raising my hand even before the attendant finished their sentence. :s

    I understand that if a policy like the one being discussed was implemented, it would raise all sorts of questions and some uproar. But, considering that potentially the plane either lands safely or doesn't land at all, I know which side of the argument I'd support.

    Unless you were going to miss a connecting flight to your vacation and would miss a day or 2 , or you were travelling for work and your company got any air miles, vouchers for travel you were given, etc.

    There would generally be hands raised though. It wasn't uncommon for passengers to ask for a better deal than was offered.
  • janejellyroll
    janejellyroll Posts: 25,763 Member
    Theoldguy1 wrote: »
    GummiMundi wrote: »
    Theoldguy1 wrote: »
    ninerbuff wrote: »
    I heard about this yesterday. Unlike a vehicle or ship, WEIGHT matters much much more when traveling by air. How the weight is dispersed on a plane matters much more than vehicles by land travel or by ship for obvious reasons. For the longest time now, aviation has used an average weight per person to decide on passengers and luggage for capacity on a plane. But with the ever growing waistlines of many, it's becoming more of a concern for safety issues. While a few hundered pounds don't matter as much to other vehicles, with planes is does matter much more.
    So now airlines are possibly looking at random weighing of passengers who likely exceed the average weight. Personally I do see this a couple of ways: it is a safety issue. If they do institute this, they better have a great back up plan for those that they may deem may not be able to board a flight due to weight overload.

    Okay, let's hear it.

    https://nypost.com/2021/05/18/airlines-to-weigh-passengers-before-boarding-airplanes/

    A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
    IDEA Fitness member
    Kickboxing Certified Instructor
    Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

    9285851.png

    I've been on numerous small commuter planes (30 passengers or less) and after everyone was boarded the attendant said they were overweight and asked for volunteers to get off and get a later flight and a travel voucher for their trouble or move people around to balance weight.

    Heck we were even on a Airbus 200 or so seat plane where they didn't fill the last 8 rows because it would have been too heavy for the runway at Maui Airport headed to LA.

    I'm thinking it will ultimately result in a surcharge (user fee) for heavier passengers. But it will be a *kitten* storm.

    I'd be raising my hand even before the attendant finished their sentence. :s

    I understand that if a policy like the one being discussed was implemented, it would raise all sorts of questions and some uproar. But, considering that potentially the plane either lands safely or doesn't land at all, I know which side of the argument I'd support.

    Unless you were going to miss a connecting flight to your vacation and would miss a day or 2 , or you were travelling for work and your company got any air miles, vouchers for travel you were given, etc.

    There would generally be hands raised though. It wasn't uncommon for passengers to ask for a better deal than was offered.

    My company's travel policy specifically states that we can't volunteer for this kind of delay.