On a recent flight out of Chicago, the captain announced that we could not take off–it seemed that the wind had changed and that our plane was now 3,000 lbs too heavy to take off from the short runways at Midway (Note: this was almost a pit thread). He then announced that we would begin unloading baggage to achieve takeoff weight.
At a certain point, passengers began to leave the plane–out of frustration or because they were asked to leave I cannot be sure. Several of the passengers around me joked, “They’re throwing off the heavy ones!” To which I replied, “Well it raises an interesting ethical question. If we discriminate on the basis of weight, and throw the most overweight individuals off the plane first, more of us will get to our destination tonight. Money and fuel will be saved. Is it ethical then, to do so?” As is the norm in such situations, nobody paid any attention to me.
So I pose the question to you, Dopers. Let us assume the plane is overweight. Let us assume the only recourse is to unload passengers until the takeoff weight is reached. Is it ethical and/or proper to unload the heaviest passengers first to maximize carrying capacity? Or is it better to select randomly and remove more passengers?
I myself am torn on the issue–I’m fairly scrawny and it was late and I really wanted to get where I was going. However, were I overweight, I could see myself becoming quite offended. Where do you stand?
In a strictly logical sense it seems best to toss the heaviest people off the plane first to maximize the number of people who can reach their destination. But from a company perspective to keep passengers from getting furious and avoid bad press it would be best to do a lottery system (or toss luggage).
Remember not all the heaviest people are necessarily overweight. Say you are a 6’4" man in excellent shape. That’s just genetics and not your fault. It becomes a form of discrimination. What happens if that man is travelling with his three young children? They have to leave with him despite being among the lightest passengers aboard.
Nope…better to do a lottery, toss luggage or stop trying to pack planes to their limits in the first place and give us all a bit more leg room in the balance.
Who or what, other than some flight attendant’s opinion, determines whether a given passenger, is ‘overweight’? Random selection seems to me to be the more fair / ethical response, especially since in the case of removing the most ‘overweight’ passengers, nothing more than appearance would likely be used as a selection criterium.
Furthermore, the plane is not overweight because of the passengers alone, it is overweight because of the combination of passengers and their baggage. To even have a hope of being ethical, a mechanism that selects the most ‘overweight’ would have to consider the passengers with the highest combined weight (body plus baggage).
But wait, most passenger flights carry some air freight as well. Why not remove air freight until the plane makes its weight, removing passengers only if needed after all the air freight has been removed? It is promoted to the public primarily as a passenger flight, after all.
I must agree that the PR-friendly approach is the best, at least for the airline, and hence the only one worth considering from a practical standpoint. I’ve wondered for some time after a rather unpleasant flight, during which my neighbor in the next seat was quite literally draping portions of my body with her rolls of flab, if maybe there couldn’t be a weight clause somewhere to protect the interests of the less-than-Jabbaesque. But I’ve concluded such a thing was impossible for similar the same reason: PR nightmare.
Ethics people have looked into these sorts of problems. (Well, bumping passengers off an overbooked flight. No cite.) They discovered that in the Old Days, minorities, soldiers and other people who would be expected not to complain got nabbed to stay behind. The better solution is to offer some sort of cash incentive to stay behind.
That way the business traveller who could really stay another night can value his trip more accurately than a simple character of 'business travelers. A Little Old Lady on her way to a wedding could simply say her trip is more important to her than a crisp c-note.
Yes, but it’s because of the person’s width, not weight. If a person is large enough to take up more than one seat, they are required to purchase two seats. (Southwest Airlines Cite)
I do find it hard to believe that, in a craft powered by a turbojet producing 1000s of pounds of thrust, a handful of fat guys will be the tipping point in whether or not the plane can achieve sufficient lift.
I susspect the airline aught to offer enticement to anyone willing to switch to a later flight. Then if not enough people accept the ienticement, people should be required to leave the flight in order of the time they booked the flight, so people who booked last minute are those who are forced to leave. If forced to leave they should automatically receive the enticement.
Nitpick: modern jetliners are powered by turbofans, rather than turbojets.
But to your point, it’s not a question of whether or not the jet could eventually get itself airborn with 3,000 extra pounds on board. Rather, it’s a question of whether or not it could do so in the alloted runway space allowing for required safety margins.
Taking the “oh, what’s a few extra pounds going to matter” approach to aircraft loading gets people killed.
The airline is not weighing every person as they embark, nor are they weighing them as they debark. The airline has a formula based on number of passengers plus carryon and they may actually weigh checked baggage.
So, if they allot 150 pounds per flyer (pulling number out of derriere for ease of calculation only), once 20 passengers leave, they’ve met their limit, regardless of passenger size. There is no scale outside that each person is getting on as the plane tries to achieve proper takeoff weight. If 20 110# people get off, the plane will still leave. If 10 300# people get off, 10 more will still have to get off.
So, don’t glare at fatty back there. The airline calculated your waifish self and my weightish self equally.
I was on a flight a few years ago, from Boston to Seattle, changing planes in Chicago. We boarded in Boston, but there was some sort of problem with the plane, and it was taking longer to fix than they said. As time went by, they called people to leave the plane and be rebooked, depending on which city they were connecting to. (i.e., as soon as it was clear that we wouldn’t be in time for the Seattle connection, they asked the Seattle passengers to get off.) They sounded like they still expected to take off soon and the remaining passengers would make their connecting flights.
(As it turned out, I was in the second group off the plane; and as I was waiting at the counter to get rebooked, I heard the baggage handlers talking about taking off all the luggage. I don’t think that plane went anywhere that day.)
I would use a similar method in the OP’s case. Check what other flights are leaving that airport soon, and have available seats. Take off the passengers who have the best chance of getting to their destinations the easiest.
I find it hard to believe that you can seriously make this statement.
The OP stated that the runways at Midway are shorter than most. You do realize that the heavier a given plane is loaded, the length of runway required to take off increases, right?
And you do realize that the consequences of going off the end of the runway at 150 mph and slamming into whatever is at the end is a Very Bad Thing, right?
As Figaro noted, it’s not a matter of whether or not the plane can achieve sufficient lift given a long enough runway. It’s a matter of whether or not the plane can achieve sufficient lift to take off before the plane runs out of runway.
The standard max takeoff weight of a fully loaded Boeing 737-500 is 115,500 lb, and the empty weight is 70,510 lb. The max load (including fuel) is therefore 44,990 lbs. Reducing the weight by 3,000 lb is equivalent to 6.67% of the max load. This is not insignificant.
When my wife worked for Air France, a very primitive estimated “human cargo weight” was calculated at check-in: while typing in the details of the passenger after observation, “male” or “female” was entered by the check-in staff. Diminutive males (anecdotally, often Far Eastern men) were marked as “female” because they’re lighter. The total was then conveyed to the pilot for fuel calculations. She tells me she’s not sure if this practice still continues, for legal reasons.