Finnair weighing in - Curt Lewis

Finnair starts weighing passengers at Helsinki Airport

Finnair on Monday confirmed it will begin weighing passengers on a voluntary basis at Helsinki Airport between late October and early November. The objective, it said, is to collect more accurate data on the average weight of passengers and their carry-on luggage.

Finnair will begin collecting more data on the weight of its passengers and their carry-on luggage by launching voluntary weight checks at the departure gates of Helsinki Airport, reports Helsingin Sanomat.

The majority state-owned airline points out that up-to-date passenger weight data is crucial for determining the need for jet fuel, for example.
The scales will be placed close to the departure gates with the initial objective of weighing 100-150 passengers together with their carry-on luggage, according to Helsingin Sanomat. The reading on the scale will be seen only by the customer service agent conducting the weighing and entered into the database in an anonymous form.

Sami Suokas, the manager of customer processes at Finnair, reveals to the newspaper that the state-owned airline, similarly to other airlines, uses the standard passenger and luggage weights devised by the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) in 2009.

"We want to make sure we have the best possible data at our disposal also in this respect. That's why we're collecting data from our own network," Suokas explains to Helsingin Sanomat.

The EASA's survey on the standard weights of passengers and baggage found that the average male passenger weighed 84.6 kilos and flew with a carry-on luggage of 6.7 kilos. The average female passenger, in turn, weighed 66.6 kilos and flew with a carry-on luggage of 5.9 kilos, while the average under-12-year-old passenger weighed 30.7 kilos and flew with a carry-on luggage of 2.0 kilos.

Almost 23,000 passengers and 22,500 pieces of luggage were weighed for the survey.

The values are lower than the mean weights in Finland, highlights Helsingin Sanomat. Finnish men weighed an average of 85.5 kilos and women an average of 70.4 kilos in 2012, according to the national health study Finrisk.

Finns, however, are naturally not the only people flying with Finnair.