Thelife- Finnair is asking passengers to be weighed to collect flight safety data.
- As of Wednesday, 600 passengers have volunteered for the exercise, the airline said.
Another airline has started asking its passengers to volunteer to step on the scales before boarding.
Finnair is now collecting the weights of its passengers on a volunteer basis as part of its "aircraft balance calculations." The airline is asking for people to be weighed along with their hand luggage at the departure gate, so the airline can update its average weights, as required by the civil aviation authority.
"We use the weighing data for the average calculations required for the safe operation of flights, and the collected data is not linked in any way to the customer's personal data," Satu Munnukka, the head of ground processes at Finnair, said in a statement on February 5. Passengers' names or booking numbers are not recorded along with their weight.
As of Wednesday, 600 passengers have volunteered to be weighed, The Guardian reported, citing a Finnair spokesperson. People who agreed to be weighed were compensated with a complimentary baggage tag.
Participants are not being asked for their name or booking number. "Only the customer service agent working at the measuring point can see the total weight, so you can participate in the study with peace of mind," Munnukka said.
The data will be collected in February, April, and May for a variety of flights departing from Finnair's hub in Helsinki, the airline said.
Finnair uses its own passenger weight measurements, and authorities require that the data is updated every five years. The last round of data was collected between 2017 and 2018, according to the statement.
The European Aviation Safety Authority also collects its own data on passenger weight for aircraft mass and balance calculations. Its latest study, in 2022, showed that average passenger weight did not significantly increase or decrease since the last study in 2009.
Air New Zealand, Korean Air, Hawaiian Airlines have made similar requests of passengers in the past year, to better understand average weights for safety. Uzbekistan Airlines began weighing passengers for the same reason in 2015.
Finnair did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider sent outside regular business hours.