Passengers weighted in airports?
Long-distance passengers may soon be weighted in airports before boarding planes.
The idea has emerged among the experts of a British company that seeks to offer airlines a new method to know more precisely what fuel they should use on each long trip to obtain savings.
According to the London newspaper The Sun, the current process used by airlines around the world is «inaccurate.»
The London-based Fuel Matrix company explained that fuel use is currently applied by estimating the average weight and gender ratio of passengers on board.
Passengers weighted in airports
The firm considers the method inaccurate because it is based on gender estimates.
The men average weight count as 189 pounds, women weigh 154 pounds and boys 77 pounds.
According to the experts the method in use leads to a large waste of fuel.
Currently airlines seek to accelerate the procedures that passengers must do in airports to travel by plane.
Humans average weight “innacurate”
But the purpose of reducing fuel costs seems to be peremptory.
The British company argues that with the current way of doing «approximate» calculations, an airline could burn between 0.3 and 05% more gasoline on any of its long trips.
The new method of weighing passengers could save operators no less than $ 1,350,000,000 worldwide.
Fuel Matrix also revealed that some airlines are already interested and in negotiations.
Its operations director, Nick Brasier, also told The Sun that passengers would never be placed in a row to weigh them as assumed.
A weighing system with discrete pressure pads would be used and the results would be kept confidential.
Brasier defended the proposed measure as part of technological efforts to improve commercial aviation, which also include methods to reduce CO2 emissions and carbon footprint.
The future: flexible airplanes
However, some experts think that in the foreseeable future commercial aviation does not seem to depend on such measures.
They describe, for example, a flexible airplane that combines smaller vehicles for a more efficient trip, capable of adapting quickly to any fuel scenario.
For example, the flexible aircraft could be used on shorter and longer trips, to increase the range of the plane and save fuel by reducing «drag.»
Each flexible plane could adapt to any trip and thus achieve the desired savings. .
