The Spanair had 162 on board. 20 of those children and 2 babys. 10 were crew members. 19 are currently survivors (3 CHD). It's hopefull that all will survive, but 4 remain serious, out of which 1 severe and 1 critical. An additional 2 passengers were left behind when they showed up 3 minutes late at the gate after they checked-in their luggage on the reportedly (almost?) overbooked flight (I believe 2 crew members were off-duty or not required, but not sure).
Flights to the Canary Islands have the same standard 20kg check-in allowance per person (spreaded in as many bag pieces as desired) and are routinely charged overweight if it goes above about 23kg, but Spanair is quite forgiving generally on a bit of overweight. Spanish travellers usually go on the light side on carry-ons (compared to say North and South America travellers), but it's your usual "if you can lift it and it fits, it goes in" with most airliners in Spain, which don't even enforce the number of carry on items. At least one couple among PAX was returning from their week long honey-moon. I do believe that Spanair has some weighted checked-in luggage reporting software on their system to assist on load calculations (speculative).
Spaniards are not the heaviest on the world (about 25% of population is overweight), but it's safe to assume most standard males will be over 77kg and most females over 57kg. Very recent extensive study among women in Spain showed only 5% being moderately under normal weight, 24.9% overweight.
But MAD-LPA is a VERY cargo-and-courier intensive route. I think we can safely assume the plane was operating a full payload, perhaps even exceeding it a bit (speculative).
Last edited by justme69; 23rd Aug 2008 at 12:12.