They weigh my carry on and complain when it’s 1kg over, yet some people weighing twice as much as me get on the plane. Makes no sense.
Your fellow passenger will be in a seat, not the overhead baggage compartment.
The fellow passenger will be spread across two seats.
There isn’t a weight limit for the overhead compartment on any airline I’ve flown.
There is you just never hit it.
you sure about that? if they enforce bag weight they won’t need to put max weight stickers in the actual plane. It’s not like anyone would humor them if there were anyways…
Yeah but I can as easily put 8kg overhead as I can 7kg. The staff won’t have to do it.
If they put the limit at 8kg you would make the same argument about 9.
I’m not saying they’re not rent seeking, I trust them as far as I could throw them, but this is a false comparison. The weight limit of the overhead compartment and the total passenger weight of the plane are two completely different things.
Limiting the carry on weight I can understand. The overhead compartment can only hold a certain amount of weight. So a limit has to exist.
And there is the danger of luggage falling on people during an emergency or even just when opening the compartment. And while 7kg hurts, more weight hurts more and even will get dangerous.
Just weigh and charge people with their baggage. Privacy and embarrassment about mass can be blamed on the bag.
“I guess I shouldn’t have brought my 50kg tote.”
- Laura, size 5xl
I’m not overweight, I just have really heavy clothes.
Not everybody checks bags tho
Everybody has at least some kind of carry-on. And if not, it would at least be cheaper.
But the things that are priced when overweight are only checked bags, no? Or also carry on bags?
Right now, yeah. But things could change if they’re considering weighing passengers. It makes sense to charge a fixed price for the staff, time, seat, and booking, and a variable price for the fuel (based on mass, distance, wind, and current fuel costs).
Some passengers might have double my mass and should pay more. Children could cost a bit less this way too.
It’s a slippery slope. Soon they’ll have two separate queues, and one of them will be called “fatties”.
Make them walk through a narrow gate to see how many seats they need to buy.
And this is how humans evolved to have whiskers.
It’s a slope I’m willing to slide down.
Until you get stuck on the sides, yeah
The “GLP-1 queue” & the “Non-GLP-1 queue”.
I mean they do need to balance the plane so it makes sense, another thing they could do is eliminate first class seats and spread the seating out a little more so they can relocate passengers easier.
On September 16, it became evident that airlines were becoming more interested in passengers’ weight. Prominent carriers like Korean Air and Air New Zealand introduced a rather unconventional rule, requiring passengers to step on scales before boarding their flights. […] This novel approach in the aviation industry has gained momentum, with the objective of maintaining optimal aircraft weight and thereby reducing fuel consumption. The primary goal of this unconventional procedure is to precisely determine the standard weight of passengers and averages. This, in turn, aids in accurately calculating the distribution of weight on the aircraft, resulting in fuel savings. […] The ultimate objective is to ensure that each flight adheres to strict parameters set by the maximum take-off weight of the aircraft, thereby enhancing safety. However, for many, this emphasis on safety might feel like an intrusion into their privacy.
I didn’t know that this was a factor that they needed to consider. The privacy aspect is real, and we need regulations on storage and deletion of this data after each flight. I can already see this info being sold to advertisers.
On the discomfort side, couldn’t they have the collection and recording happen in the background? If no other passengers or staff can see the numbers, there’s less of a chance of someone feeling uncomfortable with the process.
This is all assuming that this is actually necessary or helpful.
On the discomfort side, couldn’t they have the collection and recording happen in the background? If no other passengers or staff can see the numbers, there’s less of a chance of someone feeling uncomfortable with the process.
The weighing process involves humans, so that wouldn’t be possible.
Their average intelligence being what it is, when instructed to have one person on the scale, sometimes it’s one, sometimes two, sometimes two and a stroller. Sometimes somehow a horse ends up on the scale and no one really understands how, including that horse.
Unless you check the weight, you don’t know what exactly was weighed.
i mean, if theres a plate on the floor and soneone checks theres only one person on it before a button is pressed that solves that and theres no reason to display the number. Flash up an error to retry if its more than 3 sigma away from the expected mean.
They’re not weighing every passenger forever. They just want to get reliable stats on the average per passenger.
The article states that the information will be kept private.
I welcome it. I’m harassed for the 1kg excess in my bag. If you’re not charging others more, I’d like not to be treated like that. Give me a discount then for every kilogram I weigh less by.
…the overweight baggage charge is because of health and safety, not plane weight. Anything over 20 kilos is too heavy for a single person to safely handle so they have to get two people to deal with it, which takes more time
You on the other hand aren’t being handled by anyone. You’re not a health hazard.
This isn’t new in the airline world.
I believe there is a Tongan airline that has been doing it for a few years already
This will add a new terror to air travel
From an engineering point of view it makes really good sense because the better you can estimate a plane’s weight the better you can maximize efficiency blah blah blah. But these are humans not numbers, and it’s a bit rude…
Planes have a maximum weight, and it really matters where exactly in the plan that weight is. Even if it was rude, which it isn’t, it can be an important safety concern
Humans not able to battle climate change, because they can’t admit their weight.
I’m not ok with it but I think airlines should make bigger seats available. make it an option to book these chairs , no weighting needed, but I rather pay for a bigger seat than book 2 seats and the 2 seats not honoured when boarding the plane.
The reason for the weight check is to balance out the plane to save kerosene.
You mean like economy+, business or first class seats? Those already exist
That is so racist against Americans, lol
This doesn’t sound like they’re charging extra if you’re over a certain weight, which is what a lot of people here seem to be assuming. Its data collection for future designs.
People are aware that you get charged for overweight baggage for health and safety reasons, right? Anything over about 20 kilos is too heavy for a single person to safely handle so they have to get two people to do it, which costs more time and money. I would be very genuinely surprised if a few dozen more kilos from overweight baggage and people would be enough to seriously impact a plane’s flight unless you’re on a small town hopper
