FAA Believes Most Airlines Won’t Weigh Passengers

The Federal Aviation Administration doesn’t believe airlines will resort to weighing passengers prior to flights, saying a guidance it issued two years ago regarding weight and balance on planes inexplicably blew up into a global story.

An FAA spokesperson said weighing individual passengers was merely an option, not a mandate.

“The FAA issued an Advisory Circular in May 2019 that stressed the importance that airline weight and balance programs accurately reflect current passenger weights,” the agency told Fast Company. “Operators are evaluating their programs to comply with this guidance. While weighing customers at the gate is an option, most operators will likely rely on updated methods for estimating passenger weights.”

The idea of weighing passengers went viral this week after several travel blogs reported on it, and the story was subsequently picked up all over the world, including by TravelPulse.

The story isn’t wrong. In fact, weighing passengers has been discussed as far back as 2005 as a way to get a better sense of weight and balance on planes, especially smaller aircraft. On puddle jumpers for instance, flight attendants will sometimes ask customers to switch seats to the other side of the aisle.

The FAA has acknowledged that the weight of the average American has increased in the last two decades, forcing airlines to update their estimates.

Fast Company did reach out to several airlines, and a spokesperson for American Airlines indicated that not much would change.

“As we do today, American expects to continue using the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) data to determine accurate standard average passenger weights,” the spokesperson said. “We’ll continue to evaluate average passenger weights for each flight we operate and adjust as needed.”