Paging Fat Frenchies

Imperial Airways used to weigh passengers in the late 1920s when payload
was only a few tonnes.

Naturally, some ladies (and probably few pie-eating gents too) didn't
like this, so IA had a brainwave and hired bods from the rag trade who
were able to look at a person and guess their size/weight with
remarkable accuracy.

True story.

 

"Semites"?

 

All Air France is doing is saying it might insist that people so wide
that they might get stuck in narrow economy seats should go business
class or first class instead, where the seats are wider. Common sense
I'd have thought.

 

Those 20 seaters are often used for taking basketball teams (11
players, a few coaches, doctor an PR man). I wonder how the weight may
affect, provided that a 190cm bloke is considered small these days,
and not only are they taller, but have massively more muscle.

 

They are often put near to an exit but not next to it as those people
have to be able to open the door in an emergency.
As to get in the way, people just climb over the seats and those who
don't move fast enough

It they get noisy and run around the aircraft especially at night they
have to get off *NOW*. Even if the aircraft is at 32,000 feet.

 

Even ordinary people (not just septics) are noticeably heavier generally
than they were when the average weight was calculated.

They figure the average weight of a bag is 11kg or so too IIRC, which on
many flights is not the case.

I know that some airlines operating small turboprops weigh each bag, and
the aircraft is trimmed to some extent by distributing them on a bag by
bag basis forward or aft in the hold.

Passengers on such flights can often pay extra to book their seat
online, only to find that the pilots will instruct them to be moved to
keep the aircraft in trim.

There is a fairly big safety factor on top of the average weight of a
passenger built into the airframe and the seating, and aircraft carry
more than enough extra fuel to deal with the increased weight.

Anyway. Athletes can always eat each other if they get stuck.

 

Fnar

*perfect*

 

I said that and it is.

I'd rather all seats were a bit more spacious and comfortable though.

 

You mean as in Loz breaking their jaw and both arms as he exits?

 

When we were being briefed before going South, a chap from the
USAF gave a talk directed at those flying in early to McMurdo from ChiChi
in Hercs: "Now, your weight allowance is 240 lb, you and your luggage."
At which a rather large tradesman stood up and said, "My name's Tiny and I
have a problem -- I'm 240 lb all by myself!"

--
Ivan Reid, School of Engineering & Design, _____________ CMS Collaboration,
Brunel University. Ivan.Reid@[brunel.ac.uk|cern.ch] Room 40-1-B12, CERN
GSX600F, RG250WD "You Porsche. Me pass!" DoD #484 JKLO#003, 005
WP7# 3000 LC Unit #2368 (tinlc) UKMC#00009 BOTAFOT#16 UKRMMA#7 (Hon)
KotPT -- "for stupidity above and beyond the call of duty".

 

One flight from GVA last year we had some enormous Boeing 7x7 that
must have been at least 3x the capacity of the normal dinky Airbus. BA
sat us all down the outside seats for take-off but let us move around once
we were airborne.

--
Ivan Reid, School of Engineering & Design, _____________ CMS Collaboration,
Brunel University. Ivan.Reid@[brunel.ac.uk|cern.ch] Room 40-1-B12, CERN
GSX600F, RG250WD "You Porsche. Me pass!" DoD #484 JKLO#003, 005
WP7# 3000 LC Unit #2368 (tinlc) UKMC#00009 BOTAFOT#16 UKRMMA#7 (Hon)
KotPT -- "for stupidity above and beyond the call of duty".

 

Are they blue eyed and blonde haired? If so, count me in.


--
Beav

VN 750
Zed 1000
OMF# 19

 

It's not about weight. It's about take off weight. You can't just chuck
extra fuel in as this will add to the take off weight.

More fuel will be used trying to get to altitude in a heavy plane.
If the destination is a long way away there may not be enough fuel to
reach it after the climb.

Unfortunately adding more fuel won't help this situation because it
will make the plane heavier causing it to use more fuel.

If you go over the take off weight you don't take off.

http://www.airdisaster.com/photos/das10/photo.shtml

This is decidedly not a good thing.

Fuelling, loading and passenger weight has to be calculated as a whole
with regards to the destination.

Also we have to take into account the correct amount of seasoning for
a baskey ball player.

 

Err...

 

Indeed.
You need enough runway to accelerate to takeoff decision speed, decide
to reject the takeoff, and stop.
If the aircraft is overweight the wings will not have enough lift at
the incorrectly calculated rotate speed to fly. This can cause a tail
strike. Worse, the nose-up attitude will now cause more drag so
the aircraft will not accelerate as well thus needing even more runway.
By the time the commander realises the error there is a serious risk
that there will not be enough runway to safely stop.
If the weight and speeds had been correct in the first place there
may well have been enough runway to rotate at the correct higher speed
and still have the option to stop safely.

 

In a crash, fatter people than the aircraft is designed for decrease the
likelyhood of the aircraft staying in one piece and protecting its
occupants.

There must be a weight factor built into the MTOW of aircraft as not
many airlines weigh every passenger. I can't remember what the figures
are, but they assume the average male is something like 70kg and the
average female is 65kg. A swift google suggests this may have changed,
at least in the states.

Taking off without enough fuel to get to where you want to go is frowned
upon, so the pilot factors in enough fuel to get there, to tootle on
hold for a while if he can't get in and then fly somewhere else if it
still looks iffy. They then add more fuel for taxying and mucking about
so there is usually a fair bit more than they actually need.

Yes, sorry, perhaps I am mixing things up. I don't fly 'em, I just
chuck things in and out of them, and my understanding of why I sometimes
get asked to chuck things off that I've just chucked on because of a
weight issue isn't complete.

I'm pretty sure many aircraft in fact do exceed their MTOW by a bit and
do take off, but they don't all crash because the designers kind of knew
this would happen and jiggled the limits accordingly.

Perhaps the ban on fat french people in economy suggests these limits
are being reached.

"The aircraft overran runway 35 while landing..." (c;

Nom nom nom.

 

So are we to believe that planes only carry "just" enough fuel to get to
where they're going?

And there's me thinking that they had to carry enough to get to an alternate
airport if the original can't be used for some reason AND that they have to
have enough (still) to hang around in the stack until they're cleared to
land.

Anyway, they could always turn the "RES" tap.

--
Beav

VN 750
Zed 1000
OMF# 19

 

That's a pic of a landing crash, YTC.

But otherwise, hard to disagree

 

Cool. Al fresco flying.

 

240lbs? That's a fucking skinny septic.

--
Beav

VN 750
Zed 1000
OMF# 19