United Airlines today says it will bump severely overweight passengers from sold-out flights.
Passengers who are too large to fit comfortably in a single coach seat will soon be required to buy two tickets on the next flight or upgrade to larger business class seats, if United's flight attendants can't find two open seats for them.
The report says Chicago-based United decided to adopt the tougher policy after receiving more than 700 complaints last year from passengers who suffered because the person next to them had invaded their territory.
This comes as no surprise to Future Proof who flagged this up recently as a growing concern - although not over passenger comfort concerns - rather over the safety of overloaded flights.
International aviation standard-setting body ICAO actually does have weight standards according to region and ethnicity with Asians weighing less than North Americans, for example, although there hasn't been a major change in the regional weight index for many years.
Airlines can however apply their own standards which vary by operator although generally it's around 85kg including carry-on bags with the ICAO upper margin around 100kg - 80kg for the passenger, 20kg for carry on baggage.
Regardless of the sector being flown, or by which aircraft, weight variations can therefore be quite dramatic and the demographic distribution of travellers and regional weight changes since the 1970s all point to the fact that a more specific method of calculating weight will be required eventually.
Of course, there are bound to be strong public perception issues.
A former flying instructor confided recently that his employer had had a standard approach for loading up tourist flights, which involved making a best guess with the added phrase 'Excuse me, Madame, do you weigh between 40kg and 55kg'.
"We then just worked out the weight and balance based on the upper limit, everything else was a bonus," he reckoned.
