Safety board wants airline passengers weighed

[daniel1113]

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TRAVEL/02/27/passengers.weight.ap/index.html

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Air travel would be safer if airlines weighed their passengers from time to time to make sure they know how much weight their planes are carrying, the National Transportation Safety Board says.

Following its investigation into a commuter plane crash last year in North Carolina, the NTSB said on Thursday that airlines should at least periodically make passengers step on a scale.

Your thoughts?

 

[Dissipate]

We have to take off our shoes, dump all our stuff into a tray that goes through an X-Ray and walk through a metal detector, NOW passengers will have to step on a scale? This is getting ridiculous. Eventually it will take each person 3 hours just to get through the damn gate.

 

[Wag]

So if you lose weight during the trip do you get a refund?

 

[Zipp]

Well weight is a pretty important factor especially for those small commuter planes. I used to work for the airlines years ago and there were many times it seemed those commuter planes struggled to get up in air,especially around the holidays.The luggage got real heavy around Xmas too and that didn't help either. We even saw 737's often using the whole runway just to get up in the air at times,it's pretty crazy.

There has been many of times that I had to discreetly hand large passengers seatbelt extensions cause the regular belts were just to short to go around them and that plane wasn't moving till everybody was buckled up...And alot of them tried to fake like they were buckled in.

Something has to be done at some point and if means weighing large passengers to prevent accidents...You better do it.

 

[alchemize]

Originally posted by: Dissipate
We have to take off our shoes, dump all our stuff into a tray that goes through an X-Ray and walk through a metal detector, NOW passengers will have to step on a scale? This is getting ridiculous. Eventually it will take each person 3 hours just to get through the damn gate.

It *does* make a difference on commuter flights. The smaller the plane, the more important the weight of the passengers is evenly distributed. And of course, any plane needs to be under it's rated weight limits.

I would think this would be restricted to planes seating 30 or less.

 

[daniel1113]

Originally posted by: Dissipate
We have to take off our shoes, dump all our stuff into a tray that goes through an X-Ray and walk through a metal detector, NOW passengers will have to step on a scale? This is getting ridiculous. Eventually it will take each person 3 hours just to get through the damn gate.

That is basically what I thought at first; but, I understand the safety concerns. I can't stand airport security as it is, but I can't think of a better solution.