4 ms·

If the issue is crash safety and weight distribution, wouldn't very lightweight people pose as much of a problem?

• csydas 10y ago
  It is a concern and they do adjust for this. For example, undersold flights or flights with many absent passengers will temporarily redistribute passengers during take off to ensure "balance". On a recent flight from Minneapolis to Helsinki, we were extremely underbooked but the distribution of passengers was fairly even - the announcement from the flight crew was that we could move seats but only once we were at the cruisin altitude. I assume that there is some balance struck with averages on children, and it would explain random seat reassignments at the gate.
• adrianN 10y ago
  Weight distribution has cutoff at the lower end that is much closer to the normal weight than the cutoff at the upper end. Very petite people weigh maybe half as much as a normal person, whereas obese people can weigh four times as much as a normal person and still remain mobile.
• rlanday 10y ago
  Well, for that to be a problem, you’d need to have flights where you’re flying around a large number of lightweight people, which may not be a situation that’s presented itself. And even then, it’s probably a lot easier to unbalance the airplane by putting a bunch of very heavy people all on one side than by putting a bunch of lightweight people on one side and normal weight people on the other side (the weight differential between "overweight" and "normal weight" can be much larger than the differential between "underweight" and "normal weight").
  • Symbiote 10y ago
    Large numbers of lightweight people = a class of children, or a couple of large families. The only time I've ever been upgraded was when 80% of economy class was children on various school trips, and I was put in premium economy when I checked in.