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  • 2021-05-19 (xsd:date)
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  • Could U.S. Airlines Start Weighing Passengers? (de)
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  • In spring 2021, Snopes became aware of reports alleging U.S. airlines could start weighing passengers before they board flights to ensure aircrafts maintain a safe weight in the sky. The headlines were true. Roughly two years earlier, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) — the government agency that regulates all aviation travel in the U.S.— proposed new rules for airlines to calculate aircrafts' weight and balance, potentially replacing outdated numbers. Snopes obtained the official 58-page advisory detailing the changes here. In short, the proposal said airline companies previously considered flights' total mass — including the cabin, cockpit, passengers, crew, baggage, fuel, and all machinery — using average weights. However, as obesity rates trended upward over the years (see statistics here by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases), the FAA said there was a higher risk of error between passengers' actual weight and the averages on file. AirInsight, an airline media organization, described the issue like this: Airlines are in the business of making money from payloads. To date, payloads have been fudged and averaged. Even if people have grown larger/heavier, passengers have managed to squeeze into seats and put up with growing discomfort. We have something coming that has not been seen before. The past averages are too imprecise for the FAA and they want tighter [weight and balance] numbers. To do that, the advisory provided all airline operators, such as Delta or Frontier, a framework for changing their boarding and flight procedures to recalculate aircrafts' weight. For instance, under the FAA proposal, operators could design a random survey of customers at a handful of airports to determine an updated average total for specific routes. According to the advisory: In other words, passengers would have the right to decline stepping on a scale or sharing their weight if an airline worker asked them, and workers should attempt to keep people's weights private. Besides a survey to gauge average weights, the FAA proposal also would allow operators to determine the actual weight of each flight by: Considering that evidence, we rate this claim True. According to a May 2021 report by View From the Wing, a blog documenting airline trends, the FAA was preparing to finalize the new guidelines. While it’s foreign to the U.S., weighing passengers isn’t all that uncommon abroad, author Gary Leff wrote. I’ve even had to get on the scale myself. [...] On my first visit to the Maldives in 2012 I had to get on the scale at check-in. So did my wife, and – it appeared – every other foreigner. (en)
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