Yeah, Cessna is basically the Kleenex of small GA airplanes.
Thanks for the detailed and thoughtful (as always) reply. I couldn’t understand why they needed to check 20 bags when they admitted that 30 seats would be empty.
I first heard about the issue of weights and balance on airliners when I was on a flight decades ago with only a handful of passengers. The FAs asked us all to sit in first class – the only time I’ve flown in first – saying it helped with W&B.
So yesterday while puzzling this out, the possibility of W&B came to my mind, but 20 bags x 35 lbs = 700 lbs, which seemed not to be enough to make much difference to an 80-ton plane.
There were people sitting at the gate when we arrived in BOS, so maybe the plane was going on somewhere else, but I was in the emergency exit row and don’t remember anyone forward of me remaining in their seat when I deplaned.
So that suggestion or one of your ETAs might have been the explanation. Unfortunately, we’ll never know.
But thanks again for sharing the benefit of your vast experience.
I am not located in the US, but many of the flights out of MIA (into the caribbean) always struck me as “heck why are people having king-sized matresses/living room furniture/pianos/retro-projector-TV-sets, etc… as under-deck luggage”
confirmation or is it my observation bias?
Confirmation.
Many Caribbean and Latin American countries have extremely high import duties on commercial imports of ordinary consumer goods. With the result that the store-shelf price of a TV or a toaster is high on a worldwide absolute-price comparison basis. Many of these countries do not have highly developed big box stores and their whole distribution chain is filled with middlemen, inefficiencies, and markups. Plus the original importer pays a higher wholesale price for a Chinese toaster than does e.g. Target or Wal*Mart in the USA. The fact in most cases these are also not wealthy countries so Jose & Juanita Consumidora don’t have a lot of free cashflow makes that all the more devastating to them.
Almost all of these countries allow citizens to import a decent dollar value ($500, $1000, occasionally $5000) of goods on a personal trip without owing any import duty on the goods. And owing duty only on the excess above the duty free allowance. Per person. Including kids.
This creates an arbitrage opportunity. Any citizen of one of those countries with the spare money to take a US vacation or trip to visit ex-pat relatives here is expected by friends and family to stock up on consumer goods and bring them back to their home country. So they do that.
Miami is the US city best connected to the Caribbean and Latin America in terms of destinations served, shortness of flights, cheap prices, etc. Miami also has no language barrier whether you speak only Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, or Haitian Kreyòl.
There are also “mules” that do this as an informal business. Fly to Miami, take a taxi to a nearby shopping mall, buy 2 or 4 huge cheap suitcases, fill them with cheap merchandise, taxi back to the airport and fly home. Sell the goods and the slightly used suitcases through flea markets and bodegas and the like for more than the roundtrip airfare. Profit! Then do it again a couple days later.
The risk is that the customs authorities in your home country will recognize you if you’re a regular and decide that you’re running an unlicensed import business. But that requires that those workers be a) diligent, and b) not bribable. In a country where the informal economy and traditions associated with it are a much larger part of the local character than is the case in e.g. the USA.
This Dolphin Mall | Miami’s Largest Outlet Shopping and Entertainment Destination is only 15 minutes drive from the airport terminal. It’s fun to go there and watch all the people pushing 3 or 4 very large brand new 4-wheeled hard-sided suitcases around the mall and slowly filling them with purchases.
Switching from importing to airlining …
That has consequences for the airlines’ flight operations.
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We can’t sell formal cargo carriage to those cities where this is really prevalent because we’re in danger of not being able to carry all the luggage then. It just cubes out our capacity.
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One of our weight limitations is total payload. If folks are really stocking up on heavy stuff for some random reason, we can hit that limit. Which means we either leave baggage behind (but the next flight will probably have the same problem), or we leave some seats empty so we’re not carrying the people and we’re also not carrying their baggage.
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Another weight limitation is maximum landing weight. Which is plane + payload + expected weight of arrival fuel. If weather is poor and we need to also carry fuel to be able to divert to someplace else if we can’t land, that can also push us up to the point where the fuel weight is crowding out the passenger + baggage weight allowance. More empty seats. Some destinations have decent alternative airports nearby. Other destinations have only quite distant alternates which in turn bumps the divert fuel needs, further pushing down on capacity for people + their baggage.
There is always this balancing act between competing weight factors, but for a full airplane with normal US domestic baggage quantities, sizes, & weights, and typical US airport proximities, normally everything fits handily except in very rare conjunctions of multiple unfavorable factors.
Conversely, going to some distant island or Andean mountain destinations, every flight is a delicate balancing act where every pound is scrutinized. Because of all the gray market consumer good importing going on.
That was going to be my WAG. They’d need to be honest and tell passengers it’s a W&B issue and they need more weight in one of the bellies. For those people who wish to live.
Or at least for those who wish to actually depart, not just stay there.
thx for time, talent and your perspective!
and (how do I say that delicately) … many people from the caribbean also seem to be on the higher end of “avg. passenger weight”
It seems a heck of a lot of Americans are heavier than the official average weights the FAA say we need to use too. The weights were updated 3-4 years ago after 20 years of stasis. Most of us believe the new weights are about right for 20 years ago, not 4 years ago, much less today.
Microsoft Flight Simulator uses 170#, but some of my third party add-ons use 190, which as an average would seem to me to be beefy enough. What does the FAA or Delta use?
The one MSFS tool uses 50# for “baggage”, which I assume is checked+carry-on, which seems fair.
I don’t recall the numbers, and I’m not sure I actually ever knew them. They aren’t in any of our reference materials I still have copies of.
This cite seems of decent quality and freshness:
The pertinent part being:
US Airlines base passenger weights on the FAA Standard Average Weight Table. Adult males in summer 190lbs, winter 195lbs. Adult females in summer 170lbs, winter 175lbs. Children in summer 82 lbs, winter 87lbs. The winter weight includes more clothing and heavier footwear. Baggage is extra.
By “baggage” at the end of the quote, they mean “checked baggage”. Checked baggage is actually individually weighed and tracked. The FAA passenger weights include the assumed amount of carryon baggage.
Compared to many of my co-workers I packed fairly light while working and my suitcase and briefcase totaled about 35#. I weigh about 145 naked, so that’s 180 total, just 10 lbs less than the FAA male standard. Then I get dressed and eat 3-5 lbs of that 10 lb margin. To look at me I’m of slightly below average male height and very obviously the scrawniest adult you’ll see today. So with luggage I’m within a couple pounds of the average? I don’t think so.
IMO the FAA averages are about 30# low of reality and in some parts of the country more like 75# low. Per person.
Oh wow, I did not realize that; it seems at least half the people have carryons that, judging from their bulk, are in the 20+# range.
Transport Canada uses updated numbers, per AC 700-022.
The weights in the table found in appendix A consider 13lbs of carry on baggage.
Males and gender X are counted as 206lbs/212 for summer/winter while females are 172/178 (ages 12 and up). Children and infants have their own standard weights.
It’s always permissible to use actual weights.
It is not often we see commercial jets wading through flood water. Less so in Dubai which is not really known as being a rainy kinda place…especially enough to flood an airport. But it seems it happened:
Video (short):
https://old.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/1c5gpos/dubai_international_airport_is_closed/
Article:
Looks down at beer belly. Yeah, I weigh more than I did 20 years ago… 
Looks down…raises hand. 
I am sitting at a large group table on a cruise ship. There are 23 or 24 other people at the table. Mostly m/f couples, and a couple of singles. Some in their 20s some 80s. This is fancy dining, not the buffet.
I weight less than every man, even the elderly one, and less than all but one woman who’s about 25.
There are two men over 250, maybe over 275.
And I and my professionasly efficientl luggage weigh within a couple lbs if the FAA (and CAA) numbers. Suuuure.
One of my ‘lottery dreams’ is to have my own Cessna T-37. It looks like Cessna made a mockup of a civil airplane based on tthe T-37.
The 407 project was abandoned in favour of the Citation. I’d still rather have a T-37 than either the 407 or the Citation. 
The Tweet was fun, but horrendously limited and dangerously noisy both inside & out. The lack of pressurization made it very fatiguing to fly and the lack of a G-suit made GLOC a real concern. Despite the modest performance and G-limits by jet fighter / trainer standards
If I wanted a warbird and had decent- but not insane-level lottery money I’d go with one of the modern turboprops. Beech T-6, Pilatus PC-21, EMB 314, etc.
With insane lottery money, then once Boeing gets the T-7 going I’d upgrade to one of those. Or a KAI T-50 or Aermacchi M-346. Pure sex.
40 years ago I flew an Aermacchi MB-339 with the Peruvian Air Force a few times. Just a great toy. As long as you don’t care about the operating cost. That general performance level is plenty and the modern turboprops are right about there. The modern jet fighter trainers are in a whole 'nuther league.
Forgot to mention … I’d never heard of the 407 project before. Thanks for a great tidbit and cite.
AA’s labor union has some concerns…
So I recently departed a charter company because we had some… “artistic differences”. I started to have a bad feeling about a few things and I said so on my way out the door. This article suggests some folks at the major airlines are feeling the same way.
A few months back I posted that I think similarly about the whole industry right now. I think we’ve reached “peak efficiency”, which may explain why we’re seeing some disturbing trends on runway incursions, maintenance and some other areas. Our systems and people can’t absorb much more activity, and we’re starting to see some leakage from the balloon. That’s how I see it.