Come Fly A-Weigh
Great.
Just when most Americans thought it was safe to fly again there’s this slice of alarming news: U.S. airlines are set to begin weighing passengers at the boarding gates.
Yep, it seems someone noticed that Americans are larger than ever - apparently our tunics and yoga pants aren’t fooling anyone - and this could cause some sort of aircraft imbalance. Perhaps too many XXLs on one side of the aisle could tilt the plane. Too many on both sides might create too much drag.
The climb-on-the-scales plan was first reported by the airline blog, View From the Wing.
U.S. airlines may need to start weighing passengers in order to comply with FAA rules. For safety reasons, carriers need to calculate an aircraft’s weight and balance, and it has to be within allowable limits for the plane. However the assumptions they’ve been using for passengers are outdated. Americans are getting fatter, and the federal government wants airlines to find out how much fatter their passengers have gotten, at least for smaller aircraft.
Seriously? They’re going to start weighing us NOW? While many of us are trying to shed our quarantine 15? Or 20?
Would it have killed them to wait until all of the gyms reopen?
How fat are we? The Daily Mail reports that the FAA has just larded up its estimate of passenger weight to an average of 190 pounds per person.
190!
Old FAA standards list the average adult passenger and their carry-on baggage at 170 pounds in the summer and 175 pounds in the winter, which accounts for extra clothing.
New standards increased those averages to 190 pounds and 195 pounds, respectively, according to AirInsight Group.
That includes an average of 179 pounds in the summer and 184 pounds in the winter for women, against an average of 200 pounds in the summer and 205 pounds in the winter for men.
Good grief, this is embarrassing. Unless we’re all 6’4” tall, American travelers have turned into flying butterballs.
Buried in one of the news reports was this: Scales will face away from passengers for privacy.
That’s nice. But what about those snickering airline employees?
Actually, they’d better not snicker, because the last few times I flew I noticed that many flight attendants are not exactly svelte.
I’m old enough to remember when stewardesses were required to be slim and well-groomed. Not anymore. Many flight attendants look like the rest of us: overweight and disheveled.
Frankly, I’ve never understood airline weight requirements. I remember being caught a few years ago on a cross-country trip with overweight bag. I removed my hair dryer and the bag was below the 50-pound limit. So I carried that dryer like a gun for the rest of the trip. It flew in the cabin instead of the luggage compartment.
How did that save any weight.?
In an attempt to make us feel better about jumping on the scales before we squeeze ourselves into tiny airline seats, the View From the Wing cheerfully reminds us that many foreign countries already weigh passengers.
True. But people in foreign countries do many peculiar things.
They eat haggis, for instance.
That doesn’t mean we want to join them.
