OAN’s James Meyers
8:00 AM – Friday, February 9, 2024
An airline out of Finland will begin weighing passengers voluntarily before flights take off.
Finnair announced this week that they will start asking passengers to voluntarily weigh themselves and their carry-on baggage before takeoff in efforts to collect aircraft cargo data.
The Finland airline said passengers’ weight information will be kept anonymous and used to “optimize Finnair’s current aircraft balance calculations.”
According to the airline, weighing passengers will help ensure that the plane has not exceeded the weight capacity limit.
Additionally, the company also stated it will not use customers’ personal data.
“We use the weighing data for the average calculations required for the safe operation of flights, and the collected data is not linked in any way to the customer’s personal data,” Satu Munnukka, head of Finnair’s ground processes, said in a statement.
Annuka also claimed that the airline will not ask for the name or booking number of passengers who volunteer to be weighed.
European airlines use the mean passenger weight as calculated by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency, which revealed that men have an average weight of 181.22 lbs while women come in at an average of 148.8 lbs.
Meanwhile, according to the latest data, 42% of the U.S. population at least 20 years or older is considered obese as of 2020. However, dating back to the 1960s, that number was just a low 10%.
Several domestic airlines including American, Hawaiian, Frontier, Spirit and United require customers who are unable to fit in a single seat to purchase another ticket.
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