If you’re flying internationally with Air New Zealand in the coming weeks, you may be asked to step on a scale…
Continue reading: Air New Zealand Weighing International Passengers
Share your questions, experiences, and thoughts below.
I get asked all the time on smaller planes/carriers.... Cape Air, Southern Airways Express... you have to provide a weight at booking and then they ask again at check-in and can make you verify if they don't believe it to be plausible (per the FAA they can do that).
Benefit of Hawaiian doing the weight sampling years ago and Air New Zealand's current is not just fuel efficiency. If they have to use a different weight than standard average weights, knowing it in advance allows better planning.... such as Hawaiian knowing in advance if they could take a full plane out of Pago Pago, and if not, don't sell all the seats. Or better load plan for how much cargo they can take.
A lot of airlines do this on a slightly different scale and manner such as holiday flights between North and South or Central America with bag embargos, knowing they cannot accommodate all bags everybody would bring (and yes, I've seen one person pay $1000 cash in checked bag fees for all they were taking to El Salvador around Christmas time) so they limit everyone to one bag, a certain number to a second bag on first come/first served (or premium pax), and then only accept further on day of departure dependent on aircraft weight.
Well, is this discrimination toward gender neutral based on the screen display?
I never understood why ppl aren’t made to pay more based on combined weight of them and their luggage. I’m sick of subsidizing fat people and heavy packers air travel.
I wholeheartedly agree. I'm also sick of seeing short people and kids being able to sit in exit rows and bulkheads seats. I'm nearly 7 feet tall, why should someone be able to sit there if they don't need to? It's common sense.
I mean, people's weight can fluctuate fairly significantly. Do you weigh people when they book the ticket? At check-in? At boarding? If they are making weight, vomiting and taking laxatives, check in and then binge in the lounge, they could fairly easily add a couple of KGs before boarding, but then, at the same time, if they have a connecting flight, you are essentially telling them not to eat on their first flight.
It would also discriminate against pregnant women, which tends to be frowned upon. And since the vast majority of aeroplanes can operate the vast majority of routes with a full capacity, the weight of a passenger is not directly proportional to what it costs the airline to fly you. So in a weight based system, an airline could easily lose money if planes filled up with tiny skinny people...
More accurate to say "Air New Zealand Weighing International Passengers Voluntarily", but I guess that wasn't as clickbait-y....
If they’d offer a decent discount to passengers who agree to be weighed they’d get more volunteers. Otherwise, what’s in it for the passengers? They could also have a scale in the floor of the corridor that weighs all passengers as they board the plane. They’d get a better average that way.
Not to be pedantic, but to be pedantic, doesn't your suggested rewording indicate that Air NZ is the one voluntarily weighing passengers? It's not voluntary for them as it's mandated.
this comment actually made me laugh (in a good way). i'm imaging people doing all the things you said, the laxative run before getting weighed followed by binging in the lounge:)
besides its not discriminating against pregneant women, its discriminating against FAT pregneant women. i'm guessing plenty of pregneant women weigh less then plenty of fat men.
Since it's voluntary, this is a self-selected group. The results are not valid for the entire universe of pax.
That's ok. I've always been tired of subsidizing stupid and insensitive people and yet you are still allowed to fly.
That would discriminate: some people are taller (or shorter), have heavier (or lighter) builds, men and women, many factors they cannot influence.
Why not weigh the plane before take off and divide by number of passengers thats a good way of finding average.
it might be a good way to establish an 'average' but it would be 'after the pprocess' of assigning weight-distribution and balance - which is a key metric here.
I live in Miami and at MIA, you will often see carts of bags being pushed by porters around the check in desks of the smaller South American Airlines (BoA, Suriname Aiways, etc.). These will often have dozens of bags and they will be set off to the side. I didn't know until recently that these airlines often send these bags on later flights if the passengers' flights cannot accommodate them.
My family is from South Asia. On flights to my country, you will see everyone checking in so much baggage (but not too much over allowance bags, since poeple have kids and get more allowances - 2 bags per person is often free on most airlines on those flights). But the check in for BoA can honestly probably beat that! I often see many single individuals checking in carts with a dozen bags for themselves.
Been weighed often on small puddle jumpers in remote locations where weight and balance are more critical than on jets. But even with analog scales, the weights were never visible to other passengers.
They can simply install the scale in the floor in the booth where they x-ray every passenger individually. Bingo.
Weight and the location of the weight is critical to safety. Planes crash if they weigh too much or if the weight is in the wrong place. Guessing weight and it's location is a bad idea. It is easy to measure actual weight and center of mass location by measuring the weight on main gear and nose wheels. Commercial aircraft should have built in instrumentation to measure load supported by the wheels as the aircraft loads on the ground.
What you do have to remember is that not everyone that is big is because of over eating there maybe a medical problem or some form of illness so you are automatically stereotyping them, I believe it should be looked into more to say protect these venerable characteristics not just demand more money from these people