175-lb. passenger removed from flight over weight limitation

[KamaAina]

Not The Onion!

http://www.foxnews.com/travel/2016/02/29/175lbs-passenger-removed-from-flight-for-being-too-heavy/ (sorry)

A man weighing 175 pounds says he was forcibly removed from a flight because he weighed too much.

Illinois dentist Dan Nykaza was preparing for takeoff on an American Airlines Envoy regional flight departing from O'Hare to Salt Lake City when he and another passenger were booted from the aircraft to reduce the weight, reports ABC7 Chicago.

Nykaza said he was buckled in and had been on the plane about 20-30 minutes when he was approached by a flight attendant who told him he needed to get off....

Nykaza says even though the flight wasn’t oversold, he and the other passenger were told they were the last to check in, so they were out.

Srsly? Whatever airline is flying American's "Envoy" routes is flying a putt-putt like that? That's only supposed to happen to propjets!

[Skittles]

1. SCHEDULING KAMAAINA FOR ASS KICKING

USING FOX NEWS AS A SOURCE;*EGREGIOUS*

[KamaAina]

12. I said I was sorry!

[madinmaryland]

14. LOL!! I was thinking the same thing!!

[truedelphi]

2. I am five feet ten, and last spring, I took a United Flight from SF airport to Chicago.

I had to squirm and attempt to re-position myself every few seconds.

The lady next to me complained to the flight attendant that I moved around too much.

But unless you are under 5'10" you are uncomfortable. There is nowhere at all to put your legs.

Meanwhile more and more people are experiencing deep vein thrombosis. And dying as a result.

I will not fly again ever.

[hifiguy]

9. Back in 2013 I did Seattle to Shanghai

(starting point Minneapolis) in a Delta Economy window seat. Could barely walk for a week. Had pains in places I didn't know I had places and listed badly to one side. I am 6'1", 215 pounds, not small but not huge.

It took an hour with a muscular therapeutic masseur in Shanghai before I could actually feel all of my legs, feet and rear end again.

[truedelphi]

15. It is really a terrible thing.

I wouldn't have thought about the issue of deep vein thrombosis, but then I found out that one of my favorite "new Age" authors, Richard Carlsen, had died from that ailment while on a flight from SF to NYC.

And he was all of 44 years old. Not in great physical shape, due to a bad back, but not overweight. He was just someone whose career had forced into a hectic lifestyle that included many plane trips across the country, in order to do book promotions.

And the airlines could care less. Their recent promotional material includes how they cut one full inch, per seat! off their overseas flights, NYC to places in Europe, in order for fuel reductions.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

39. I got DVT from driving in Dallas Traffic.

It was a couple of days before Thanksgiving a few years ago. I was going north on I-35 (the Highway to Hell -- cue AC/DC) and attempting to get to OKC.


I think it took me 5 hours to get through Dallas. I was at a dead stop on I-35 going West just north of Downtown, through the underpasses where it's dark. Two cars were ahead of me in the space in front of me. One going from the left lane to the right lane, and the other going from the right lane to the left lane. I was in the center lane and they were having a standoff.


I grew up in Houston and have seen some strange things, but I have NEVER seen that kind of a dead stop standoff with 2 cars in front of me.

,
Two days later, after cooking Thanksgiving dinner all day and being extremely short of breath, if I took a few steps. I was in the Emergency Room in Oklahoma City with pulmonary emboli. The clots had broken free and lodged in my lungs. I spent over a week in ICU. I had never been in ICU before. I didn't have health insurance and am paying it off slowly. They did a CAT scan of my lungs the morning after I was admitted. They never told me the extent or size of my emboli, and I assumed that was because they didn't want to scare the hell out of me. Basically, one of my doctors told me that if they are bad enough to kill you, you drop like a rock.

I also had completely uncontrolled diabetes. Part of the extreme panting was ketoacidosis. Either of those conditions would have killed me within 24 hours.


I didn't know that Dallas drivers are crazier than Houston drivers. But they are!!! As my friend says, "I see no reason for Dallas to exist." LOL


Now when I drive all over the great state of Texas, I get out every hour and walk around at a gas station and stretch so this won't happen again.

[Ilsa]

26. I have a very tall friend who cannot fly.

Too uncomfortable and is at risk for DVT. A 3 hour flight could be enough to put him in the hospital or kill him.

[TheDormouse]

33. I've wondered if Scalia died of a pulmonary embolism

One of the most serious risks of deep venous thrombosis is (possibly fatal) pulmonary embolism.

[milestogo]

44. I was on a flight with a college basketball team last year

A bunch of tall young men, and one that was over 7 feet sat near me. He had to put his knees in the aisle.

[GummyBearz]

47. Tell me about it...

I'm 6'1 200lbs and broad shouldered. I'm either contorted up against the wall (window seat), or have an entire shoulder + arm hanging in the aisle constantly getting bumped by people going to the restroom (aisle seat). The middle seat is literally off limits lest I piss off my 2 neighbors.

I don't see how anyone over the age of 12 can be comfortable flying today.

[Bjornsdotter]

3. I was on a puddle jumper once

...where the pilot came back and shuffled us back & forth across the aisle to balance the plane.

It was a bit scary.

[Ex Lurker]

13. I had to do that once

My seat was in the back and they moved me to the front. I'm big but not huge, about 190 lbs.

[Major Nikon]

21. I would have been scared if they hadn't

Very bad shit can happen when a plane is out of balance limits.

[ManiacJoe]

43. Weight balancing by swapping seats: been there, done that.

[marions ghost]

45. I make it a point not to

go on any planes where they ask your weight.

[scscholar]

4. I bet they didn't toss any of that sweet...

profitably cargo off.

[valerief]

8. Yep, my first thought, too. nt

[hfojvt]

5. Well, at least they went by seniority

instead of discriminating by weight.

Reminds me of a joke. These guys went moose hunting in Alaska, flew into a remote area. Pilot told them, you can only take one moose back with you. When he returns they have two moose. He says "I told you I can only take one." They argue with him and protest, said they were here last year and that pilot flying the same plane took two moose.

So the pilot is convinced. After all, if the pilot did it last year, and with the same plane ...

So they load up the plane and it takes off, but with the extra weight they cannot get over the nearby mountain and the plane crashes.

Fortunately nobody is hurt (except the moose of course). They get out and one guy asks "where are we?" The other guy says, "About fifty yards further than we got last year."

[Logical]

23. Good one! I will remember that! Nt

[Kalidurga]

6. I'm assuming he is over 5'8"

I don't think that is very heavy for that height.

[VMA131Marine]

7. The OP is somewhat misleading...

the passenger was not bumped because he was overweight, but because the plane was overweight or its center of gravity was outside the acceptable limits.

[rjsquirrel]

36. Exactly

His weight is fully irrelevant to the issue, and doesn't belong in the lede.

Last to check in is first bumped.

I'm 6'1"/200 lbs and fly all the time.

[Lochloosa]

10. If 175 put the airplane over limit I would gladly get off.

[B Calm]

16. Bingo! My thoughts too.

[rjsquirrel]

38. Well it was two passengers

So more like 300+

But still!

[marions ghost]

46. yep me too

[SheilaT]

11. There's something wrong with that story.

Modern airplanes, even the regional jets aren't that weight sensitive. Or at least I find it highly unlikely that they are.

I'm a former airline employee, and in the very distant past I've even done the weight and balance thing on our planes. Sometimes when it got a bit iffy, we'd leave of freight. Or mail. Or luggage. In my time we never had to leave off passengers. And the only time I ever experienced even the leaving off of freight was on a very hot summer day, and the length of the runway and the temperature were combined factors.

175 pounds is probably just about what they'd currently allow for an adult, and the plane ought to be able to fly full of passengers at that weight.

So there's something that doesn't sound quite right to me here.

Added on edit: If it were a weight distribution problem that's a very easy solve: Move a couple of the passengers around.

[davidn3600]

17. Especially planes with jet engines

Jet engines today are typically way more powerful than required to fly the plane. In fact, a big Boeing 777 can fly and land on just one engine with no problem.

But increasing weight of Americans and their luggage over the years have forced pilots to up their weight calculations. Maybe it has something to do with fuel. Maybe the airline is limiting how much they can spend. More weight means more fuel. It could also depend on what they are carrying. If there is something in the cargo that is very heavy they may have to reduce the passengers.

[SheilaT]

19. The cargo comes off before the passengers. Period. If it absolutely positively has to be there,

You use FedEx.

And again, I'm talking about 1969, 1970. Propeller airplanes. I worked at DCA, and at the time the main runway was 5,280 feet long. One mile. A relatively short runway. Those first two or three summers we occasionally, but very rarely, had a problem. And as I've already mentioned, we never took off passengers, although I think once or twice we took off all the cargo, all the freight, all the airmail, and then had to leave behind some luggage. That literally happened once or twice.

One of those summers they were doing some kind of work on the runway, making its usable length shorter, or maybe we had to use the other, shorter runways. I do recall being aware of passenger restrictions, but I don't every recall ever having to take passengers off our flights. That was back in the Good Old Days when flights were never full.

So yeah, some 45 years later there's something wrong with that story.

Maybe the guy was really 300 pounds. Maybe they really were oversold. Maybe something else. I can assure you that three-quarters of the time the passengers do not understand what is going on. But in 2016 to have to pull off one or two 175 pound passengers for weight? It doesn't sound right. They'd have taken off freight. They've had rearranged how the passengers were sitting. Maybe something else.

[Major Nikon]

22. I suspect it may have something to do with the fuel loaded

Airlines are now using stricter limits on the amount of fuel that they take on for a given flight. More fuel means more weight and more weight means more fuel burned. So they may have taken on fuel expecting a certain load and realized they had more of a load than they anticipated. So from that point their choice would be to recalculate everything and take on more fuel or lighten the load.

[SheilaT]

28. I will say I don't know a lot about the current

weight and balance standards, but there's still something wrong with that story. 175 pounds? Really? Customer service would generally dictate take on more fuel if your assessment is correct. Meanwhile, don't those planes ever carry cargo? How about passenger baggage? Leaving behind a couple or six suitcases is vastly preferable to taking passengers off. And I do seem to recall I may have been on the receiving end of bags left behind. I think that once or twice we got a message from a station telling us that when a flight came in we needed to know that some specific passenger's luggage hadn't made it with him.

I also keep on coming back to the fact that passengers often get their facts muddled, and that's to put it kindly.

[Major Nikon]

30. I suspect there's more to the story than we will probably ever know

But how much the person actually weighed doesn't matter much. For calculation purposes, all passengers weight the same other than differences like male/female, adult/child which are different in the estimates allowed. So taking off a 300lb person would be no different than taking off a 100lb person.

[SheilaT]

34. Right.

And again, back some 45 years ago when the planes didn't have as powerful engines, taking someone off for weight reasons was almost completely unheard of. As I've already mentioned, cargo, freight, airmail, and luggage came off before passengers. If passengers had to come off the plane was going to fly with no cargo, freight, airmail, or even the luggage. And I can assure you I NEVER knew of that happening.

I worked for ten years as an airline agent, and while I do know that things are somewhat different these days, I'm still a bit suspicious. Is it possible those regional planes never carry cargo, freight, or airmail? They of course do carry passenger luggage, and even with the amount passengers insist on carrying on board, on those small regional jets a lot of that luggage simply winds up being boarded planeside. So the notion that they wouldn't have pulled off some of that baggage just doesn't make sense to me.

[TheDormouse]

40. what if pilot was new-ish or under scrutiny for some reason

might be more inclined to go by the book

[lpbk2713]

18. That is the equivalent of about 25 gallons of jet fuel.

And that doesn't allow for the evicted passenger's baggage.

That much fuel could have easily been used up while in queue.

A flight from Chicago to Salt Lake City would not have required
a full fuel load. The Captain could have added more fuel if the
difference was all that critical.

I smell something odd in Faux's story.

[LiberalElite]

20. It's been several years since I flew anywhere - how do they know

anyone's weight? (Apologies in advance for possible stupid question.)

[Major Nikon]

24. The FAA allows them to use estimates for each person

So how much a person actually weighs is irrelevant.

If you want the long version, you can read about it here:
http://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Advisory_Circular/AC120-27E.pdf

[LiberalElite]

25. Thanks! nt

[SheilaT]

29. Thanks for posting that.

I looked through for the current average passenger weights, and I will say they're a lot more than they wore 45 years ago, but still more than the 175 this guy says he weighs. But even if he weight 300 pounds, the only issue I see is if he could fit into the seat, and that does not seem to be in play.

[Major Nikon]

31. They upped the weight estimates and there's more variables now

So it's a bit more complicated than the old 175lb rule.

[TheDormouse]

35. they also know who the last 2 to check in were nt

[MadDAsHell]

27. Crazy misleading headline. nt

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

32. I have been booted off a few Beech 1900's over the years for weight and balance

And a Bombardier CRJ as well.

[SheilaT]

37. The Beech 1900 makes sense

as that's a very small plane, but all the Bombardier CRJs seem to be a lot larger, and I wouldn't have thought the weight and balance would be an issue.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

41. It was 106 degrees with a short runway

They unloaded four of about thirty people. I got the boot because I wasn't making a connection.

[SheilaT]

42. Aha!

High temps, short runway. Now I get it. We had that problem at DCA.

But this story takes place in February. Not high temps. And I don't think there's a short runway involved, either.

[1939]

49. Some combination of

Runway length, altitude, temperature, fuel load, luggage load, cargo load. etc made the airline feel this was a good idea to remove two people. No use whining. You always get bent over when you fly.

[cyberswede]

48. The headline is misleading; he wasn't booted off becasue of his weight

He was booted because he was the among the last to check in.