Cape Air and all the commuter planes flying to Nantucket require you to give your weight and the people at check-in weigh your luggage and anything you take on board–purse, brief case. The folks at the gate often tell people where to sit to distribute the weight all around. I once sat next to the pilot. I am a nervous flyer and sitting up front and personal freaked me out. I tead a book the entire time.
The overweight issue does happen on large planes, too, although it is less common.
In the picture, it looks to be boeing 737. I would think 2-300 lb is within their margin of error, no biggie. If the airline weighed before the boarding and took precautions ahead, that’s being responsible. Here, the guy was sitting 20-30 minutes all buckled in before asked to leave the plane.
This happened on Envoy Air. According to Wikipedia, their largest (in terms of passenger count) plane is an Embraer E-175, which holds 76 passengers+crew, and it appears those might only operate on routes into and out of DFW. The plane in the photo is a stock image of some sort.
Wolverine nails it. And Envoy Air just flies small aircraft, so it’s not that surprising.
I’ve been bumped from an MD-11 (wide body heavy airplane) before, and I’m 128 pounds, with light luggage.
Though I am surprised they would choose an elite status pax to bump, maybe he showed up at the last moment. They have to choose somehow. I can’t believe this made the news, crazy!
This article just made the light bulb in my head go off on a 20 year old mystery. So a hundred years ago W and I went on our honeymoon to Moorea (Tahitian island). We took a little puddle-jumper from Tahiti to Moorea.
So here’s the mystery - we literally saw our luggage get loaded on the plane. Then we got on. But when we landed, no luggage! We’ve wondered for 20 years what the heck happened. Now I’m thinking the plane was too heavy so they pulled our luggage off! Our luggage didn’t show up until the next day. Oh, and it was the kind of plane where if you wanted air conditioning you opened the window next to you because every seat was a window seat :))
Glad the mystery solved…
With the proposed larger seats, maybe we could avoid the weight issue,
“A five ounce bird cannot carry a one pound coconut …”
Oops, wrong thread 
It had nothing to do w his exact weight. The pilot just counts heads if there’s a weight & balance issue.
Weight & balance can crop if there’s a strong headwind- not uncommon in the winter.
Do they weigh the airplane with passengers? Or do they just have a lower max capacity under certain conditions, like 100 people max in good weather 90 max if wind, etc? As pointed out by NYT article, if the airlines squeeze in more people by making seats smaller, I would guess in old days when they rarely had weight issue since they were flying fewer people even when it’s full.
They don’t weigh the entire plane. The pilots get a tally of the weighed checked luggage & payload. There are generic weight assumptions made per passenger.
Then the quantity of fuel loaded is determined by variables like overall weight, distance to destination, wind/weather conditions, and an ample safety margin. If the margin is deemed not to be ample enough, then human or luggage payload gets removed.
Here’s a recent case where the luggage got limited instead of the passengers:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2016/01/gone-wind
Who decides which goes first, passenger, luggage, or the payload? Or rather which would be a fair practice, to off passengers first or luggage or the payload? I get that booting a passenger will be the simplest for the airline since they can remove themselves.
Every airline has its own policy on what to take off the plane.
Good PR would dictate that the airline should pick the option that inconveniences the least number of customers. When Malaysia Airlines, a few months ago, put a temporary blanket ban on all checked luggage on ultra long haul flights to Europe, it garnered them further int’l ridicule (the Economist article I linked).
If I was running the airline, I’d boot the passenger and smooth things by giving them compensation, a hotel room, a meal, and reassuring them they don’t look fat in those jeans.
I would have welcomed this in one of my previous flights. Stuck with an obese 300 pound lady who spilled over into my seat.
I do not care about your personal choices until they affect me, THIS WAS THE WORST FLIGHT EVER.
I wish they would have kicked her off or forced her to buy 2 seats since I could barely fit in mine while she took up a third of it.
Heavy/obese people flying is never fun for anyone. We really need to find a solution. Bigger seats, charging by weight and size sounds like the best proposal.
Smaller planes are going to be affected by weight, the way smaller boats are a lot more sensitive to weight than bigger ships are. When you fly small planes like Cesnas, you try and balance out the weight, so the plane is relatively weight neutral both fore and aft and side to side, for example. Atmospheric conditions make a difference, too, more weight means more fuel used, and in certain conditions a plane burns more fuel (for example, going into headwinds) so keeping the weight down would help balance out the extra fuel usage to be able to safely make their destination, or something like that.
I suspect when they asked people to leave, they use a standard calculation, which often uses 150 pounds per person, the same way they typically estimate out baggage at X pounds/bag. It does mean if someone weighs 110 pounds, they are overestimating the impact of them leaving, but that balances out with the people over 150 where they are saving more weight than calculated.
The Malaysia Airlines plane that banned luggage because of weight was a B777-- a big, widebody.
I’m no skinny minnie myself, but I do fit easily within the seat. I just flew home wedged in the middle seat between a person like the above and a mom with a baby. And then the person had to keep their feet up on the bulkhead, while sleeping, so I didn’t feel too comfortable trying to get up to go to the restroom. Luckily mom and baby were fine.
It’s really hard when people spill into your seat. I’m so claustrophobic that it drives me crazy.
@GMTplus7
I was referring to smaller planes, not jumbo jets. They may also have banned luggage for security fears, and used weight as an excuse, or perhaps they were stretching the limits of fuel with the flight, and were looking for any kind of weight reduction shrug.
@southfloridamom9:
I once flew from Florida to NYC in the middle seat between a couple (one of them got the window seat, the other one liked the aisle). I am not small, but they were pretty big, I am glad they were nice people, but when we hit NYC the plane kept rolling because there were winds >40 mph, and we were going into Laguardia, it made things interesting (the poor woman was on the window seat, I am sure she didn’t appreciate me rocking into her, with the weight of her husband behind me, too:). One of the rougher landings I ever was on.
Musicprnt…I had nearly the same experience. I am 6’1" at the time I was probably 225, maybe a bit more. They each outweighed me by at least 100 pounds. It was a redeye from Vegas to Milwaukee. Worst. Flight. Ever. They wanted to talk. I would have switched with either of them. Lucky we didn’t run into your turbulence or I might have been seriously injured.
I don’t mind sitting next to someone who is extremely overweight, as long as they are pleasant, considerate, and,well, female. I don’t like strange guys touching me, but having overweight family members that are dear to me, I understand how hard it can be to fly. I will give others plenty of room if they need it and are nice, because I really don’t need much room.