Airline puts international passengers on the scales pre-flight
- Reference: 1685514545
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2023/05/31/air_new_zealand_to_get/
- Source link:
Air New Zealand [1]called the effort a "survey" and explained it is part of a Civil Aviation Authority requirement. It's also completely voluntary.
The airline completed a similar survey in 2021 of domestic passengers, but that was pre-COVID.
[2]
"Now that international travel is back up and running, it's time for international flyers to weigh in," said the airline.
[3]
[4]
For airlines, weight equals cost, and having accurate weight is important to ensuring there's enough fuel – which of course also adds to the weight.
As expected from an airline, Air New Zealand said it weighs “everything that goes on the aircraft – from the cargo to the meals onboard, to the luggage in the hold.”
[5]
As is customary, though, it uses an average assumed standard weight for customers, crew and cabin bags.
But as shapes and sizes of travellers vary, that standard is often contested. At a time when many airlines are adding extra rows of seats to an already compact passenger compartment, a more accurate weight could make the difference between profit and no profit.
A former aircraft mass properties engineer – commonly referred to as a "weights engineer" – told The Register : "In short, people are getting heavier and we need to have a way to calculate an average passenger weight that is in line with the times – not a standard from 50 years ago." As he recently left that role after two decades, he asked not to be named for this article.
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"It is common for agencies such as the US FAA or Europe's EASA to periodically weigh passengers before flights to collect a baseline average weight, so Air New Zealand is just trying to stay one step ahead," he added. "However, making it voluntary would likely skew the results."
Air New Zealand is not only making the weighing voluntary, it promises the data will be collected anonymously with no visible display.
"I think making weighing voluntary is the ethical thing to do here. As with anything related to the human body, consent is important," Boston-based therapist specializing in eating disorders, Molly Robson LCSW, told The Reg .
"I think it could only trigger passengers if this data gets used in a stigmatizing or harmful way. What would be great is some awareness from the airlines of how potentially traumatic flying while fat is – updating the data while also acknowledging that airplane seats were designed with certain bodies in mind," she added.
[7]Chinese company claims it's built batteries so dense they can power electric airplanes
[8]Boeing takes flight in sustainability battle with carbon data cruncher
[9]Irony alert: Major airport to be interrupted for two hours to replace UPS
[10]To improve security, consider how the aviation world stopped blaming pilots
But all the effort for accuracy of weight might in the end result in no change. A similar voluntary study from the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) carried out by Lufthansa in 2022 [11]revealed no significant change from 2008 values.
And while Air New Zealand is weighing passengers voluntarily for the purpose of a study, there has been at least one airline to weigh passengers for the purpose of charging them on a sliding scale.
In 2012, now-defunct [12]Samoa Air became the world's first airline to charge passengers by weight instead of seat.
Passengers booked their flights based on their weight and the length of the flight, and that weight had to be verified at the check-in counter.
The plan predictably shocked many. Some argued such a plan benefitted women and children, who tend to weigh less than men, and therefore prevented them subsidizing costs for their male counterparts. Weighing passengers is, however, uncontroversial when practised by operators of smaller aircraft, as on such vehicles a few stray kilograms can have outsized impact. Weigh-ins are therefore an important safety consideration. ®
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[1] https://www.airnewzealand.co.nz/press-release-2023-air-new-zealand-scales-a-weighty-issue
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZHcavRwrTZ7UTjqK6Tu7-AAAANQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZHcavRwrTZ7UTjqK6Tu7-AAAANQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZHcavRwrTZ7UTjqK6Tu7-AAAANQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
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[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZHcavRwrTZ7UTjqK6Tu7-AAAANQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/20/catl_dense_batteries_for_planes/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/18/boeing_sustainability_tool/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2023/05/08/ups_replacement_project_to_shut/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/14/aviations_just_culture_improves_cybersecurity/
[11] https://www.easa.europa.eu/en/newsroom-and-events/news/easa-review-standard-passenger-weights-2022-shows-no-significant-change?fbclid=IwAR2zIx0NCtX2EtzRle76zjA0SFheGeWg4qaD2wIwf6RxuF-9oVUIKsyUbWM
[12] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-airlines-weight-samoa-idUSBRE93204320130403
[13] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Good.
Agreed! Many a tragedy has started by assuming customers weights based on wildly outdated averages. Tourist boats are one of the main culprits here. Stability calculations based on long out of date numbers.
Re: Good.
I watched a video about a tourist boat that capsized and it turned out that it went through a lot of modifications without being retested. Originally tested it could accomodate 45 passengers, with the massive canopy it had it was only rated for about 14.
Assumptions cost lives.
I have some sympathy with the idea of charging by weight: The Stoltman brothers are gonna cost a lot more than a couple of super-models!
But it has to be handled in a sensitive manner. The Stoltman brothers are probably less concerned about people knowing their weight than, say, someone with an eating disorder or body dysmorphic.
I agree that it is a good safety measure. But making it voluntary is going to skew the results. Maybe it would be possible to add a weighing function to the security scan where you stand still in the round booth, while the scanner spins it should be enough time to get a half decent weight measure. No need to tell anyone, just collect the average over a day.
I've only ever seen the full body scanners in the US. The rest of the world makes do with walk through metal detectors.
Southampton Airport (Hampshire UK) has one - that's a small regional airport so I'd imagine some of the bigger ones have them too.
Those backscatter scanners are pretty useless. I had to go through one in Dallas and it was summer and I was doing what most brits do in that sort of heat and sweating like a power shower. It could not see through my t-shirt due to it being a bit damp so they had to pat me down.
CPH uses full body scans.
Maybe you don't get out much. Sophisticated body scanners have been a thing in Europe for years. My local airport is Schiphol, where you don't have to faff about with taking your laptop out, or even bother about taking a water bottle through. Usually not queued for more than 5 minutes.
The UK is slow introducing them.
You could just weigh the person with all their baggage, no need to display it to anyone, just use it to update the aircraft load.
You can estimate weight very accurately from the security scanner image.
Is it ethical to do so? would be the question there.
Since you only need "Person 1 weighs x" and no other details I can't see a problem, except possibly in the minds of some shitheads and a bent lawyer trying to make a killing.
Better yet, put the scale in the scanner so you can be weighed while you're checked for bombs/guns/drugs.
It would slow security down as they'd need need to know who they were scanning. Plus reconciling a currently anonymous scan with a personal record would introduce all kinds of privacy issues.
optional?
""I think making weighing voluntary is the ethical thing to do here. As with anything related to the human body, consent is important," Boston-based therapist specializing in eating disorders, Molly Robson LCSW, told The Reg."
Firstly, it should be perfectly possible to weigh every passenger and still do it completely ethically. Have a scale just at the point the boarding passes are checked, so each passenger is weighed exactly once. All the machine needs to keep are a list of weights, there is no need (and indeed there should be no way) of associating a weight with a person or any other identifier. There is even no need for the machine to display the measured weight, just an LED that blinks to say that the machine is done with the measurement, next please. If it's completely voluntary, the people opting out wil be those more sensitive about their weight, which completely invalidates the results.
Secondly, while it's nice to include the point of view of a " therapist specializing in eating disorders", the number of people who are overweight, or indeed obese, because of eating disorders are a very small %age of overweight/obese people. In the vast majority of cases it is a choice* to prioritise food over exercise, junk food over healthy food etc. If someone has an eating disorder, my commiserations, and exceptions can be made. Otherwise, if a passenger doesn't fit in their allocated seat, why do they think it's OK to overflow into the next seat rather than pay for a second seat or pay extra for a wider seat?
*or a habit, which has become a habit because of the accumulation of many hundreds of small and innocuous-seeming choices
Re: optional?
I'm convinced that the seats are narrower than they used to be. Certainly leg room has been reduced in cattle class over the last couple of decades.
I've not grown in height in the last 20 years but when I flew in the late 90's/early 00's I could fit in an economy seat without crushing my knees against the seat in front. A few years ago I had to fly again and I could barely sit down in an economy seat and I had to ask the person in front not to recline their seat. Thankfully it was a relatively short flight.
Re: optional?
Not sure they've gotten any narrower (not much to gain for the airlines), but they certainly have gotten shorter as airlines squeeze extra rows in the same space.
Re: optional?
I think that some airlines have worked out they can get another seat in each row in some widebody aircraft...
Re: optional?
The possible issue here is that you, strictly speaking, do have to track where each person sits. Having all the obese one in the back and the heroin chic models in the front can wreak havoc with the centre of gravity. That means you track by seat number, which allows identification (has to actually, it's mandatory). Fully anonymous won't be possible then.
Happened to me in the 1990's
Before boarding a flight from Boston to Marthas Vineyard, I was asked how much I weighed. That was in my younger days when I was quite fit and normal weight.
The reason was that they needed to distribute tthe weight evenly. The Marthas Vineyard airport had such a short runway that the flight was operated with a 1950's DC-3, so balancing the weight was important. Rumor has it that the local oligarks refused to extend the runway, because it worked very well with their private jets, and they preferred not to have too many tourists.
It is the oldest plane I have ever flown.
Won't someone please think of the fatties!
"I think making weighing voluntary is the ethical thing to do here."
No, it is not. You'll get just the light people weighing themselves, so they won't have an accurate idea of the plane's weight & balance.
As an Official Fat American Bastard[1], I think aviation safety trumps snowflake feelings.
Besides, they don't give a crap who is fat and who is thin, they're mostly interested in the lump (heh) sum.
1 (255lbs as I have only an 8-bit scale...)
Re: Won't someone please think of the fatties!
If you used metric you could be twice as heavy (and a bit) before you had to worry about overflow!
Not Weighed but...
I was on an internal flight to Rhode Island, it was relatively empty but they'd filled the seats from the front.
Shortly before departure there was a request from the flight deck, "Can some passengers please move to the rear of the plane?"
If they're weighing solely for a study of average weights it can be truly anonymous, if they're weighing to check the individual plane loading it needs to use seat number and therefore data is identifiable.
I've seen quite a few articles recently where (very)plus-size folk (mostly from the "influencer community...whatever that is) have been very vocal about how airlines treat them unfairly - seats too small, not enough room, aisles too narrow, that sort of thing. The message seems to be that being plus-size they shouldn't be discriminated against, and in fact being that size should be normalised by society.
If that's the aim, then I can't see why they anyone should object to being weighed like this because (a) apparently weight is nothing to be ashamed about, (b) it will help airlines to understand that plus-size passengers are part of their customer base.
Perfect excuse
"I'm a bumble bee. I defy the laws of physics. I can still fly!"
Good.
I'm glad they're doing this, and to be quite honest I'd feel much safer on a plane knowing everyone's been weighed so they know exactly how heavy the plane is.
Just look at Air Midwest flight 5481. The plane was overloaded, and they were using average passenger weight from the 60's which was wildly out of date at the time the plane went down.