Where do you stand on the flying weight debate?
Finnair, Finland’s flagship airline, this week became the latest airline to begin ‘inviting’ passengers to weigh in before they travel. The move is designed to better estimate the plane’s weight before takeoff.
The Finns must be a chill lot because the airline has been surprised by the positive response.
“Our customers have taken it really positively so far. We’ve been quite surprised by people wanting to take part,” a spokesperson said.
The weighing is done in a private area and people who take part have been given a small gift. Travellers are not penalised for their weight.
Satu Munnukka, head of ground processes at Finnair, told The Guardian the measurements were being collected for safety purposes and were “not linked in any way to the customer’s personal data”.
Apparently, the averages will be used by the Finnish safety agency to calculate aircraft balances and loading limits until 2030.
Enter social media. People who don’t like to read past the headlines are in an uproar about ‘body shaming’, and people who are never likely to travel on Finnair say they are boycotting the airline because they are ‘shocked and disgusted’.
Never mind that several other airlines have been doing the same thing, also to calculate long-term weight averages, including Korean Air, Hawaiian Air and Air New Zealand. Are they going to boycott them all?
Pilot strike
Did you know Qantas pilots went on strike this week?
Well, unless you are in WA it probably flew under the radar (see what I did there).
Pilots working for Network Aviation (NA), a Qantas subsidiary that services the fly-in, fly-out workforce and regional communities in WA, stopped work for the day on Thursday as part of an ongoing campaign.
Pay’s not the problem. There’s been argy-bargy for more than a year about NA pilots getting the same terms and conditions as pilots on domestic routes but Qantas won’t budge.
It’s a sign of how far Qantas’ public support has fallen that despite facing cancelled plans and travel chaos, the ABC was reporting lot of support for the pilots.
Another week, another Qantas drama.
When was the last time you weighed yourself? Would you be happy to be weighed before a flight? Why not share your opinion in the comments section below?
Also read: Supermarkets, airlines and power companies are charging ‘exploitative’ prices