Travel Question: Should airlines weigh passengers?

Q I read your article about aircraft loads and ultra-long-range flights. With such flights becoming more popular, and therefore weight more critical, isn’t it time that airlines weighed passengers with their luggage? Why should those of us who control our weight carefully have to pay the same as those who are overweight?

John M

A As fuel prices rise, the total weight of passengers and baggage becomes increasingly critical. And with baggage, airlines are keen to levy extra charges for baggage. Up until 2006, almost any airline ticket came with at least a 20kg allowance for checked bags. Then budget airlines began charging for the privilege of checking in larger pieces of luggage, and many others followed. And starting today, Ryanair and Wizz Air have shrunk their free cabin baggage allowance, adding to the costs for passengers who want to take more than the bare essentials.

Luggage is now seen as a valuable, revenue-raising ancillary, and you can expect soon to see more moves – perhaps British Airways reducing its extremely generous hand-baggage allowance to a more conventional 10kg.

But while airlines watch baggage very closely, they don’t ask their passengers’ weights except for some very sensitive operations (typically light aircraft or helicopter flights). Indeed, even the presumption that under-12s weigh less than adults and should therefore pay a lower fare began to be erased with the arrival of low-cost airlines; easyJet has always charged a passenger aged two the same price as a 22-year-old.

Airlines sometimes ask obese passengers who cannot comfortably sit in a standard aircraft seat to buy an extra seat (and, in the case of the US carrier, Southwest, refund the additional space if the plane is not full). But I believe travellers have limits about what they will tolerate, and there is no prospect that I can see of travellers being weighed at check-in before travel on normal passenger flights.

Every day, our travel correspondent, Simon Calder, tackles a reader’s question. Just email yours to s@hols.tv or tweet @simoncalder