
An American airline wins the right to weigh passengers on its Samoan route - nether
http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2016/10/scales-justice
======
hipaulshi
Pilot here.

Every airplane has a maximum weight it can fly. Different than cars, every
airplanes also have an envelope where the center of gravity has to fall enter.
If the center of gravity is behind the design envelope, airplane has a
tendency to flip backward, stall on take off then crash, it has happened
before. It could also means if the airplane enters a spin, the recover may not
be possible. If the center of gravity is too forward, it will slow the
cruising speed due to increased drag, much easier to stall during cruise and
burning more fuel.

So for every single flight, pilot or dispatch has to calculate those 2
numbers, for every passenger and baggage, and decide how many fuel to take on
each flight.

Of course, asking each passengers weight would be awkward at best, so airlines
and FAA used an average body weight number to avoid this, it worked until
2003. An accident happened which killed 21 people on board a small
transportation aircraft. It is found that the average body weight number FAA
and airline used were outdated
[http://www.ntsb.gov/Investigations/AccidentReports/Pages/AAR...](http://www.ntsb.gov/Investigations/AccidentReports/Pages/AAR0401.aspx)
FAA has since advised airlines that what FAA presumed average weight of its
population has increased, and advised airlines to do the same.

Of course, this will only work on average cases, and will fail if the sample
group is out of average. Resampling has to be done to remain operating in the
envelope, and if standard deviation is still out of normal, each individual
weight has to be taken.

~~~
giovannibajo1
In many half-empty flights, the crew allows passengers to freely change seats,
after take off. Obviously only a few do, but wouldn't that be dangerous
anyway, given your comment on balancing weigh?

~~~
jessaustin
TFA references "an American airline". Since we Americans are misanthropes,
when we freely choose our seats we have a balancing tendency. Your concern
would be more valid for populations who would naturally choose to sit
together.

~~~
kahrkunne
What kind of group would choose to sit as close as possible in a plane?

~~~
jessaustin
I've seen it happen on trains, in Asia. Different cultures have different
attitudes about this sort of thing.

------
Animats
It's a big problem with smaller aircraft. A crash in 2003 [1] of an overloaded
19-passenger commuter aircraft out of Charlotte, NC led the FAA to require
airlines to increase their assumed average passenger weight by 20-30 pounds.

[1]
[http://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/A...](http://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/AAR0401.pdf)

~~~
tunap
Will look at the report, but the last I heard it was the luggage shifting
during initial lift-off that caused the control loss.

I was pretty happy my brother drove to pick me up in Charlotte that morning.
The other option was to take the Greenville leg, which is 30 miles closer to
them.

------
_coldfire
I struggle to see the problem other than human vanity as to why passengers
aren't weighed with their luggage.

If you can accept that your bag costs the airline more in fuel why not accept
that your weight contributes also?

~~~
dzhiurgis
Fuel is weak argument. Vendover Productions recently did a video on youtube
around costs around flying. IIRC the cost was less than 10%.

That said I do not mind to be weighted as long as airline guarantees something
in return for my height. I would be in favour for some government regulation
that seats should be progressively sized from small to large.

Some airlines from taller nations like Lufthansa and SAS have extra row of
more legroom, but back support is still a problem and its not easy to get
them.

~~~
wallace_f
>Fuel is weak argument. Vendover Productions recently did a video on youtube
around costs around flying. IIRC the cost was less than 10%.

I found that hard to believe so I Google'd it. I came up with 35%

You have fixed costs and variable costs. I would guess that is the reason for
the discrepancy.

~~~
dzhiurgis
According to that guy its even less than that:
[https://www.google.co.nz/amp/bgr.com/2016/05/16/why-is-
flyin...](https://www.google.co.nz/amp/bgr.com/2016/05/16/why-is-flying-
expensive/amp/?client=safari)

2.5$ for 70$ flight

~~~
wallace_f
According to the Boston Globe it's 34% [1]

According to that link its claim that a fully loaded A320 uses $2.50 worth of
fuel from DC to NYC @ 105MPG.

Solving for $, they're claiming jet fuel $ = 1.33/g

That puts jet fuel at half the price of unleaded in many states, including
California.

I didn't believe that until I checked the price online and found it's
currently @ $1.50. Didn't know jet fuel is cheaper than gas.

One additional note - DC to NYC is a very short flight. Ratio of fuel cost to
ticket price likely increases with flight distance.

1 - [https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2014/11/17/fuel-
prices-...](https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2014/11/17/fuel-prices-are-
lower-why-aren-airline-tickets-cheaper/6IO8Hkcy4Norm71MzAvfaJ/story.html)

------
yummyfajitas
It costs more to lend money to black people even if FICO is held equal [1].
The lender doesn't care about your race, they care about your probability of
repayment. Is it legitimate to charge people higher interest rates solely
because they are black?

It costs more to employ a woman, since she'll get sick more and poses a higher
risk of vanishing into babyland. Is it legitimate to lower her wage
commensurately?

I don't know the answer to these questions. But unless you are willing to bite
the bullet and endorse the racial/sexual discrimination I propose above, you
don't have a clear answer either.

[1] See this comment for calculations:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13156153#13167650](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13156153#13167650)

~~~
benchaney
I think you are confusing two different issues. It is more expensive to lend
money to black people because race is a predictor of poverty. Wealth can be
measured directly, so discriminating based on race isn't really an effective
strategy (ethics not withstanding). In the cost of fuel argument the root
cause of the increase in cost is the weight of the passenger (it isn't just a
predictor). The gender discrimination case is more complicated, but if
companies want to modify wages based on expected medical leave required, I
don't really see a problem with that.

~~~
yummyfajitas
No, that's simply not true. See the comment I linked to. A black person with a
600 FICO has a 40% chance of default, compared to an Asian person with a 600
FICO who has only a 20% chance of default. With identical financial indicators
the black person is less likely to repay. Race discrimination is directly
profitable, given the available data [1].

Now it's true that in this example it's just a predictor. The very nature of
lending is stochastic. Then again, airplane crashes as a function of weight
distribution are also stochastic.

[1] It's theoretically possible - likely even - that some hidden data may
reduce the influence of race. For example, lenders are required (more or less)
to ignore location data since that could be "redlining".

~~~
tptacek
Again, I'll point out that you've cherry picked an idiosyncratic point on the
FICO scale (600, vs. the 620 cutoff used by industry for subprime loans), and
cherry picked the cohorts you're comparing (Asians being least likely in
general to default), both of which has the effect of maximizing the delta
you're citing as evidence for your argument.

It would be a nit, except we had a long thread about this previously wherein I
perceived you to have conceded these points, so I'm surprised to see you
repeating them here.

~~~
yummyfajitas
I'm confused what you are arguing. What specific claim did you dispute (as I
recall none), and what do you believe I conceded?

In that thread I concluded you had no substantive disagreement and were merely
looking for excuses to call me racist. (Why you enjoy that so much I don't
know, but I don't mind so enjoy.)

As far as the argument I make here, what do you believe this refutes?

~~~
solutionyogi
I would agree with Dang here.

I am a big fan of you and Thomas. And I love reading your discussions on a
topic and have read most of them. I tend to agree with your arguments more but
I must say that Thomas is very respectful while disagreeing and I haven't seen
him call you a racist. Feel free to link to his comment where he does and I
will stand corrected.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13184555](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13184555)

Context here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13173952](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13173952)

The remainder of the thread had no substantive disagreement, just questioning
my motives for discussing a factual claim.

~~~
tptacek
For the argument you're trying to make, this is such a weird cite. The thing I
was "wrong" about was that you weren't a white supremacist, and my wrongness
was due to the _immediately preceding comment_ in which you stated directly
that white supremacists were "mostly factually correct".

I still don't believe you. You're right: the comment you cited was a moment of
incivility (specifically: I was sarcastically dismissing you). I don't believe
that you think white supremacists are mostly factually correct. I think you
get a rise out of zapping this particular raw nerve, and feel like you're so
gifted at rationalizing message board comments that nobody will pin you down
on that.

~~~
yummyfajitas
The parent asked whether you really did call me a racist, I provided a case
where you did (and you just agreed that you called me a white supremacist).
That's all.

I don't mind the attack, I just wish it were easier to tell when you were
interested in intellectual discussion. Intellectual disagreement is fun, but
threads like the one I linked to feel like getting rickrolled. Less fun.

------
gragas
How can this possibly be discriminatory against Samoans when the airline
explicitly stated that seating arrangements were to properly distribute weight
on the aircrafts?

1\. The airline's motives have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with race

2\. The airline clearly explained its motives

It's almost as if people _actually don 't understand what discrimination
means_.

~~~
gleenn
I know a lot of people who would probably be too embarrassed to be weighed and
wouldn't fly.

~~~
freyr
We already have somebody looking at our naked body as we walk through mm-wave
scanners, and that hasn't deterred anybody. I don't think a discreet scale
would be that big a deal. It's not like their weight needs to be displayed to
everyone around them.

~~~
paulmd
If you wanted to be discreet/efficient about it, putting scales in the body
scanners would be a great place to do it since you're already dealing with
people one-by-one anyway.

They could scan your ticket into the body scanner to identify/validate your
ticket, and then it spits the weight back into the airline's computers for
balance calculation.

------
JumpCrisscross
> _Hawaiian Airlines...discovered it was burning through more fuel than
> anticipated on its route between Honolulu and...American Samoa_

Why not just increase the ticket price?

~~~
rlanday
Presumably they did that if the cost were an issue, the primary problem
discussed in the article though is keeping weight balanced on the airplane so
it doesn’t crash, not the cost of fuel.

------
makecheck
I recently flew a regional airline that had strict policies about bag weight
(20 pounds or something). They had scales for luggage right there. Then I
thought to myself: the difference between my weight and anyone a few inches
taller — regardless of fat — could be _way_ more than 20 pounds, especially
given some muscle. It makes little sense to inconvenience people by checking
bags that are slightly over-weight, while standing next to someone that is
probably twice the difference.

Maybe, then, a rule for bags is also based on _the distribution of weight in
the overhead bins_ , as well as the difficulty of knowing exactly where the
heavy bags would be. People are easy to identify and move, bags probably need
to be more uniform. Plus, it would encourage relatively small bags (to help
with the space issue).

------
shimon_e
Informative video about giving a breakdown for the cost of flying:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Oe8T3AvydU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Oe8T3AvydU)

------
sctb
We detached this subthread from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13268990](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13268990)
and marked it off-topic.

~~~
yummyfajitas
In what way is it off topic? It directly addresses the point raised in the
comment it is replying to.

~~~
sctb
When discussing controversial topics on Hacker News, we need to cleave to the
topic at hand (weighing passengers for air travel, in this case) to avoid the
threads degrading because of the already-heightened sensitivity. You can
sometimes tell if you haven't succeeded by whether the ensuing subthread
becomes about something else. It has here, predictably.

Additionally, you've brought up specific topics of controversy which you've
addressed several times before on this site without anything new to say about
them. This is not in keeping with the guideline that asks us not to introduce
classic flamewar topics.

~~~
yummyfajitas
You could have just said "hecklers veto" rather than "off topic". Would have
been less confusing.

I was confused because comment is pretty specifically on topic - it's directly
illustrating why the ethics of height discrimination are not simple.

~~~
dang
Scott's traveling, but asked me to reply with "on reflection, that seems fair"
and to take off the offtopic penalty. So I've done that.

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

~~~
rlanday
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
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.

------
wodencafe
There seems to be 2 distinct justifications for this.

1\. The plane has to be at a safe weight to fly. I'm ok with this.

2\. The airline wants to charge more money for heavier passengers. This is
getting into discrimination territory.

------
hoodoof
It might have been more positive to redefine standard human weight as being
heavier, and give discounts to smaller people.

------
bobbles
"Tall people earn substantially more money on average, and so it seems only
fair (from this short writer’s perspective) that they experience a bit of
added discomfort or have to shell out extra for a roomier seat. But the
overweight and obese? They receive no such life benefits, and it feels rather
cruel, if not illegal, to ask them to pay extra for the same service."

Jesus...

~~~
csydas
Please expand on what you find disagreeable here, else the post is just white
noise and not really appropriate for HN.

I do think the author's reasoning in that part is flawed and a bit vengeful
simply because it seems to me like a misguided sense of justice and
right/wrong, and that they want what they perceive as justice simply because
of the circumstances of one's birth sometimes being a boon, sometimes being a
burden.

But this is also a post from a blog, not an article from The Economist - I
think the opinion is shallow and poorly thought out, but it's just an opinion.

~~~
jayjay71
"Please expand on what you find disagreeable here, else the post is just white
noise and not really appropriate for HN."

That comment piqued my curiosity enough for me to read the article, something
which probably isn't true for over 99% of the comments I read on HN. So I
strongly disagree with you that it isn't appropriate for HN. There is nothing
defamatory in what he says, and whether or not it is substantive can be
decided with votes like all other comments.

~~~
manojlds
Actually I skipped the last few paras after getting the initial tone of the
article and this comment made me go back.

------
kurren
[https://youtu.be/AvbuNj37Z8I](https://youtu.be/AvbuNj37Z8I)

------
mstodd
You as an individual should pay more because you're an idiot

~~~
dang
We've banned this account for violating the HN guidelines. If you don't want
it to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and promise to
abide by the rules in the future.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

We detached this comment from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13268980](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13268980)
and marked it off-topic.

