Weight-based … Fair?
What if this entire flight were filled with Sumo wrestlers? That was my musing as we lumbered down the runway for takeoff on Providenciales Island on a recent winter escape to the Turks and Caicos Islands. I know from watching the “Missionary Bush Pilot” channel on YouTube years ago how important weight – and its distribution is – to getting an aircraft off the ground. Back home in front of my computer, Gemini and I chatted on my musing. Air Canada has a direct flight from Tokyo to Toronto. The company flies the Boeing 777-300ER on this route. At 400 passengers – all Sumo wrestlers at an average of 160 kg – a flight of wrestlers coming to Canada for an exhibition could get off the ground. But the aircraft would need to stop to refuel. The Sumo wrestlers would have to go without luggage. And it’s doubtful they could cram themselves into the seats, side-by-side across the width of the aircraft.
What I wanted to know was how an airline calculates how much fuel to put on an aircraft for a flight: isn’t the weight variable? The answer is a mix of standards, statistics, observations, and margin allowances. Air Canada uses Standard Average Weights dictated by Transport Canada to determine how much a passenger weighs. The number changes in the winter to account for winter clothing. The airline weighs all checked baggage to get a precise number for this component of the flight’s weight. Similarly, for cargo and fuel. Every aircraft in the fleet has an empty weight certificate on file. Feeding all the data into a computer program produces a Load Sheet for the flight. If the airline or the pilot observes a long line of bulky passengers going through the gate or climbing through the aircraft door, a dispatcher would override the computer program and input higher averages for passenger weights. Finally, a "conservative" margin of error allows for a weight higher than the calculated value.
The second part of my query related to my weight on a flight. My wife and I are slim. Or, to be politically incorrect, we’re far off the average weight for our height and gender. We’ve endured the embarrassment of having to redistribute weight in checked bags because we were over the limit. We’ve remarked to ourselves that it’s unfair that as slim passengers, we get no credit for our lower body weight that we can apply to our checked baggage. I asked Gemini how much an airline would save on fuel to transport me versus a standard male from Tokyo to Toronto on the thought-experiment flight. The savings would be between $23 and $25. Surely, I should be able to go a kilogram over in my checked bag?! As Gemini pointed out, just imagine the public relations nightmare at the ticketing counter.
“Yes, sir, your 25-kilogram bag is fine because you are a slim passenger.”
To the passenger behind me:
“Sorry, madam, you have to take two kilograms out of your checked bag to compensate for being fat. Maybe leave the two gigantic chocolate bars behind? Or you can give them to this slim gentleman ahead of you.”
Apparently, some carriers – Samoa Air was the first and possibly only one to do so – have experimented with pay-by-weight pricing. The head of the airline is quoted as saying that charging by weight was "the concept of the future." Perhaps he’s slim like my wife and me.
