Average Pax with bags weights
 

Hi, I am NOT a pilot.

I am trying to work some numbers and it seems that a lot of carriers are using a standard weight for the "average" passenger+carryons+baggage of 90 Kgs

This seems a bit on the low side to me.

I have found the following

https://www.easa.europa.eu/rulemakin...95%20Final.pdf

where is suggests
Male 94 Kg including carryon
Female 75 Kg including carryon
Average distribution 88 Kg
Baggage 17 Kg

That would mean that I should be seeing an "average" of 105 Kgs in the numbers.

The 90Kg I am seeing is on longhaul trans-Pacific and USA-Middle East

I could understand if it was only with the NE Asia carriers as I would assume that the average Asian person weighs somewhat less than the average American/European, but I'm also seeing the same 90kgs on routes into NZ & AU.

Im going to guess that the 'average' person to/from M.East includes a lot of transits onwards to South Asia, so again, there's a weight difference I suppose.

Any thoughts would help!

Cheers

G&T ice n slice

Your link returns a 404 error and I don't know where you got the 90 kg average mass from.

If you take a look at the current rules European airlines have to apply (OPS 1.620 of Annex III to Commission Regulation [EC] No 859/2008 of 20 August 2008, the so called EU-OPS - p. 124 of this PDF), you'll see that the system of standard masses is far more diverse than you might have guessed.

Average Pax with bags weights
 

We use:

Male - 88kg
Female - 70kg
Child - 35kg
Domestic bag - 12kg
International bag - 13kg

Regardless of jurisdiction, standard weights should be based on periodically reviewed population statistics so that they reflect some sort of relation to reality.

Suggest you run a search as the subject has been done to death on numerous occasions in the past ...

The tale of Air Midwest Express Flight 5481 from Jan 2003 might also interest you, if you haven't come across it. The aircraft crashed due in part to the fact that while the weight and centre of gravity were within limits according to average weight values approved by the FAA, it was actually overweight and with a CoG aft of the allowable limit. As a result, the FAA standards were revised. Until that point, they were using the average weight of an American as defined in 1936.

it was actually overweight and with a CoG aft of the allowable limit

There is a presumption that, when using standard weights, the loading folk/crew exercise some sensible oversight and abandon standard weights if such is patently appropriate.

Use of standard weights becomes more problematic as the number of occupants reduces (although not overly relevant in this case). This was shown quite clearly by John K's Australian study on the subject some years ago (which became the basis for current Australian standard weight rules).

Until that point, they were using the average weight of an American as defined in 1936

As I recall, the old 170lb figure dated back to an anthropometric study of US Army personnel in the 40s ?

Report http://www.ntsb.gov/doclib/reports/2004/AAR0401.pdf is well-worth the read to emphasize just how fragile load and balance calculations are if housekeeping is not well-maintained during the process. One can only feel considerable empathy for the ill-fated crew which was clearly taken by surprise in a situation well outside the square ...

(1) Thank you for replies and the additional links
(2) Sorry If I started "yet another" thread, only search engines actually hate me...
(3) Not sure why the link won't work so I'll try again...

https://www.easa.europa.eu/rulemakin...95%20Final.pdf

here it is broken up with spaces
https:// EASA - European Aviation Safety Agency /rulemaking /docs /research /Weight%20Survey%20R20090095%20Final.pdf

(4) about the "90 Kg"

Working forward using avge pax = 88 kg avge baggage = 17 kg so avge pax+bag = 105 Kg
so payload for freight+mail = payload -[nbr pax * 105]
on some routes for some carriers results in negative payload for freight+mail
That's when calculated the avge pax wgt backwards to the 90Kg.

I have route, payload, freight+mail, nbr pax
deconstructing this where total_weight_pax = [payload -{freight+mail}] and dividing result by nbr pax gives 90 Kg

All route data from transtats at the US DOT.

Curiously there seems to be no particular data on the average number of checked bags per pax. I found a couple of references that suggest 1.8 bag/pax and the EASA study suggests that avge baggage weight/pax 17Kg

(trying to calculate baggage containers used to estimate the potential containers for freight+mail)

I'll try re-running the numbers with vatiations derived from your info.

Thanks and any other helpful remarks are appreciated

As a side note, there is a small island hopping carrier in Tonga that weighs all of the passengers individually and charges them according to weight. $ per kilo :D