"Non-Binary" passengers
 

I noticed that the airlines are now letting the nonbinary passengers on board (as a result of the California law). When loading the aircraft, do the airlines now have to use the worst case weight of the male passenger for all?

Airlines are planning to present travelers who don't identify as either male or female more options when they book their flights.
Airlines for America, an industry group that represents some of the largest U.S. carriers, including American, Alaska, JetBlue, and the International Air Transport Association, which represents most of the world's airlines, recently approved standards for nonbinary passenger identification.

I wasn't aware that they were previously being denied boarding, in any state.

You make a best guess at each passenger's gender, use the applicable weight estimate, and rely upon there being roughly equal numbers of m->f and f->m mis-assignments?

I'm old enough to remember when ALL passengers were analog...

There are already several US States where the Drivers License is not allowed to be used to board aircraft. I am unclear the Federal stance on this whole gender thing. (notice that it is now Mx, instead of Mr/Ms/Mrs!

I was just wondering about loading, as such programs use the male/female/children standard weights in the load profile.

a bit OT, but I just saw where a college football team players were staggered about the aircraft due to their average weight of 300 pounds, even though they were the only ones on the charter aircraft.

Aside from those that don't look obviously like male or female - of which I have met a fair few in my life - I think the whole point is that "non binary folk" may in fact look male or female but something else about them doesn't fit into the same pigeon hole. Maybe the genitals don't match the looks, or the hormones, or the genetics, or the legal identity, or maybe any or all of them are ambiguous.

Or to turn it round, if you know what a male looks like and what a female looks like, can you explain what an XX/XY mosaic looks like - since they are neither male nor female, they must look different, right?

One thing I am sure about, I've never met another human being I couldn't clearly identify as being another human being - too often we seem to lose sight of that.

This opens up a whole new security - airline collaboration opportunity:

Identify each passenger as they approach the body scanner by scanning their boarding pass. While nude-o-scoping them, calculate the volume of their body, which will give a good estimate of weight.

Classify them as child/small adult /large adult instead of the current child/woman/man. Feed that into the load planning software!

Simples!

nice idea, nicolai.

Simpler version for the less technologically advanced peoples: Anyone wishing not to disclose their biological sex is to provide their weight at the time of travel. Only a small change to the software: Weight = std.M / std.F / act.nnn kg.

Why not just f***ing weigh them in the scanner - simple scales (or weighbridge in some cases), proven tech not rocket science.

For that matter, why not just do a visual estimate of each passengers weight at the gate, rough groups would do (anorexic / thin / normal / overweight / whale). You'll probably get a far better estimate doing that than using gender averages as a proxy for the information you actually want/need.

Just try weighing passengers and see what happens!

What do you think will happen?

Passengers are already scanned, x-rayed, de-shoed, de-belted, groped, deprived of liquids and arbitrary items of luggage, and herded for hours through maze-like shopping malls that might have an airport on the other side if they are lucky. Yet they keep coming in ever increasing numbers.

I've often wondered why aircraft cannot determine their own actual mass while on the ground. A simple load cell in the undercarriage does not seem like rocket science compared to all the other sensors onboard.

Rather than ask passengers if they are male or female whilst booking, it would be far simpler to ask.

Born with a penis ◻︎
Born without a penis ◻︎

It is a factual question about anatomy.

Unfortunately almost any amount of wind would render the readings useless.

We've had them since the early 1970s.
https://patents.google.com/patent/US3701279A/en

STAN was a gross error check on taxi out. If there was a significant error, then we had to return to stand and investigate.

If only genetics, human growth, and anatomy were that simple. Unfortunately they are not. Google up "Intersex", "androgen insensitivity", "Klinefelter syndrome" (XXY, XXXY, XXXXY), "XYY syndrome", "46,XX/46,XY" for some of the medical aspects, let alone the social aspects.

With what relevance?

It sure isn't weight - no matter how much we might like it to, it simply doesn't weigh that much. Most breasts probably weigh more (I can say definitely in only a few cases...), in fact the breasts of the people with penises probably weigh more in some cases.

Born with testes might be a better question since the testosterone affects size, musculature, etc. - but that simply doesn't correspond to born with penis (ask the IAAF...). So what are you asking the question for?

His suggestion is consistent with all of that, and it gets around it all by simply discriminating the physical factor that correlates with weight without getting entangled with definitions of sex, gender, social/personal identity, hidden genetic syndromes, etc.

Unfortunately his suggestion is that people declare what they were born with, which is not feasible as most people can't remember their birth. A significant minority of people have surgery soon after birth which changes what they were born with. Some of those are not told this, and therefore do not even know the information he says is needed.

Also, his chosen physical factor isn't directly linked to size and weight. Testosterone levels, which is what sport seems to be settling on as the discriminator (not without controversy), are. Much as some feminists see the penis as the oppressor, it appears that in reality it is the cojones that maketh the man (or at least the person not allowed to compete as a woman).

Still not a good question to ask, as some people don't know they've got them, but happily we can just give every passenger a quick blood test to find out...

If you compare obesity rates to transgender rates, it's pretty obvious which will have a bigger effect on accuracy of assumed weights.