Where do you stand on the flying weight debate?
Finnair, Finland’s flagship airline, this week became the latest airline to begin ‘inviting’ passengers to weigh in before they travel. The move is designed to better estimate the plane’s weight before takeoff.
The Finns must be a chill lot because the airline has been surprised by the positive response.
“Our customers have taken it really positively so far. We’ve been quite surprised by people wanting to take part,” a spokesperson said.
The weighing is done in a private area and people who take part have been given a small gift. Travellers are not penalised for their weight.
Satu Munnukka, head of ground processes at Finnair, told The Guardian the measurements were being collected for safety purposes and were “not linked in any way to the customer’s personal data”.
Apparently, the averages will be used by the Finnish safety agency to calculate aircraft balances and loading limits until 2030.
Enter social media. People who don’t like to read past the headlines are in an uproar about ‘body shaming’, and people who are never likely to travel on Finnair say they are boycotting the airline because they are ‘shocked and disgusted’.
Never mind that several other airlines have been doing the same thing, also to calculate long-term weight averages, including Korean Air, Hawaiian Air and Air New Zealand. Are they going to boycott them all?
Pilot strike
Did you know Qantas pilots went on strike this week?
Well, unless you are in WA it probably flew under the radar (see what I did there).
Pilots working for Network Aviation (NA), a Qantas subsidiary that services the fly-in, fly-out workforce and regional communities in WA, stopped work for the day on Thursday as part of an ongoing campaign.
Pay’s not the problem. There’s been argy-bargy for more than a year about NA pilots getting the same terms and conditions as pilots on domestic routes but Qantas won’t budge.
It’s a sign of how far Qantas’ public support has fallen that despite facing cancelled plans and travel chaos, the ABC was reporting lot of support for the pilots.
Another week, another Qantas drama.
When was the last time you weighed yourself? Would you be happy to be weighed before a flight? Why not share your opinion in the comments section below?
Also read: Supermarkets, airlines and power companies are charging ‘exploitative’ prices
Wouldn’t worry me having to be weighed before a flight. I’d rather make it to my destination in one piece.
Good old qantas! Never a dull moment with that airline. I wouldn’t fly with them again unless there wasn’t another choice.
Having been on 737 Qantas flight a number of years ago, Melb to Perth. The aisle seat was vacant until a passenger sat. He took 1/2 of my seat plus his own. Sat down shoved a few tablets down, off he went to sleep.
I was unable to change seat and had a great trip home, only !/2 seat.
Next best thing was to call the flight attendant asking if she could ask the passenger to allow me to vacate and go to the WC. He stood up and didn’t move to allow me to vacate. Looked at my wife “He has caused us grief by using 1/2”. Every 1/2 hr called the flight attendant asking the passenger to allow a WC break. We can’t help having a weak bladder and needed the WC. Our age late 70s has it compensations.
He was not a happy bunny. I hope he had a great trip, plenty of room, however we inconvenienced him as much as we could. This is the way to cheese off the over weight people who being over weight to book two seats for their size. Some people can not help being over weight due to health problems—BOOK TWO SEATS side by side to allow for over size.
Wouldn’t worry me, it would make flying in smaller planes safer. A 12 seater plane crashed because too many fat people upset the balance. The distribution of passengers was based on out of date estimates of ~ 78 kg for men and most of the males were nearer 100kg