Airline announces it will weigh passengers before boarding flights
It sounds like a bit of a nightmare for some of us.
Don't get too alarmed, but it looks like airlines might be taking their pre-flight requirements a step further.
Finnair, an airline in Finland, just announced that it's running a trial where passengers' bags won't be the only things getting weighed before take-off - passengers themselves will, too.
Interestingly, though, this isn't going to be something that it forces on everyone. Instead, the scheme is voluntary and lets people step forward to help the airline plan its seating charts to ensure that its planes are best balanced.
Advert
It will help Finnair build up a more accurate picture of the average weight that each passenger brings with them.
Finnair runs a decent number of smaller routes, where more fun-sized planes carry smaller passenger numbers, and these aircraft can require more careful calibration of where the weight sits in the cabin to ensure they fly correctly.
So, it's not quite as vindictive as it all sounds, and Finnair says that the weight information will be kept completely separate from all of a passenger's actual data, to ensure that the details aren't retained or used for any other purpose.
Back in 2017, Finnair first made waves for announcing similar plans - saying it wasn't to penalize passengers, but rather to help streamline operating costs so it could work out the weight and balance of the plane more precisely.
Back then, communications director Päivyt Tallqvist issued a statement on the whole affair.
She said: "This is part of having a very strong safety culture in our organization. We want to see if the data we're using for calculations is accurate. We use them for every flight, and they're important for the aircraft's performance."
Somewhat unsurprisingly, the news is causing a bit of a stir on social media.
But according to Finnair there have already been more than 500 voluntary weigh-ins at Helsinki Airport, so clearly at least some people are happy to chip in and offer up their weight while they go through their baggage and boarding pass checks.
The tests will continue through to May this year, with no confirmation that they'll go further, and it'll be interesting to see if any other carriers decide to follow suit.