Quite so. Agonising over ways of mitigating the loadsheet impact of the occasional non-binary passenger is a good example of a solution looking for a problem.

So the Mechanics are now... :ooh:

I call BS trolling on this. The fantasy link to aviation safety is just an excuse to parade the OP's strange worries about how other people choose to describe themselves.

Weight them all and let the loadmaster sort it out.

Weighing in the security scanner could be problematic. That would require some sort of database entry permission from TSA screening into individual airlines passenger databases. It's feasible, but I don't want to be the software DER that has to certify such a system.

If what Smythe says about drivers licences not being acceptable ID in several states is true, doesn't that make life difficult for those without passports, which I think is quite common with US domestic pax.

The proportion of non binary passengers can't be very high. Treating them all as male (for weight purposes only) shouldn't have any great effect on load sheets (unless you have a group going to a LGBT convention).

Double barrel makes a good point. I believe that the 1973 tube stock which serves Heathrow was designed to weigh its passenger load which was then used to adjust the breaking. Load weighing is used to determine passenger load in calculating railway overcrowding. You obviously need to calibrate the system properly that that shouldn't be a problem with modern technology. Obviously if you have miscalculated the weight of pax & cargo you may have to unload something before taking off and that could create headaches. I don't know what a system would weigh or cost but it could have avoided a number of incident reports that we have seen recently.

Indeed. My flippant comments about security-airline cooperation aside (surely proposing such an unlikely friendship is clearly humorous :) ), this is the pragmatic solution.

It's my understanding that some airlines already do this for all passengers. For example, AA (as far as I know still) assumes all passengers are adult male except in situations where W&B is critical and then they start correcting the data for the passenger count and seating to show children and women accurately. For example the MD-80 balance is critical with low passenger counts - adults must be at the front, cargo or bags loaded into the front hold first, or the aircraft might sit on its tail. If any aircraft is near MTOW then correcting some passengers from adult to child might bring the weight down enough to allow an easy flight plan.

So rounding up is already done in many cases, and rounding the weight of some passengers up because their actual M/F weight is not clear from the booking information will only be a minor part of the existing rounding-up being done for convenience.

This is true in Washington State for a basic drivers license. However, we have available the option of obtaining 'enhanced' licenses/ID cards which are accepted for domestic flight boarding and returning through customs from Canada and Mexico. I think these other several states offer similar options. I imagine that a number of people who don't possess a passport and haven't the foresight to obtain enhanced ID will be inconvenienced. But somebody has to ride the Greyhound buses.

I don't have an enhanced drivers license (but I do have a passport and passport card). This allows me to hand my d/l over to a less trustworthy party as ID and not have the biometric data surreptitiously downloaded from the card.

That statement is false. All 50 states drivers licenses can be used to board domestic flights. There are 11 states who still issue drivers licenses that are not compliant with the REAL ID act. All 11 of those states have been granted extensions while they revise their licensing process, and DHS continues to accept their non-compliant licenses for boarding in the meantime.

As a former despatcher responsible for load sheets, do we still use 75Kg male 65Kg female 35Kg child and 10Kg infant? I think these are probably way out of date given the size of people today. 75Kg is under 12 stone. The great god Google tells me UK average for men is 84Kg (Office of National Statistics, 2010).

What is the descriptive logic in this term "non-binary?" Aren't all creatures but hermaphrodites non-binary?

One has to wonder what this 'lady' weighs in at ?
 

Thanks, that seems more realistic.

As a quick check - a weighbridge in the aerobridge to the aircraft. All it would need to do is calculate total weight (therefore individuals wouldn't get their nose out of joint). Ensure gate staff don't pass through the weighbridge if they are not boarding the flight (go around through a staff only taped off area). Flight/cabin crew go once only through the gate. They can weigh 62.5t trucks on the highway to a reasonable degree of accuracy as they pass over the weighbridges here in Australia at 60kph - surely people can be measured to within a kilo as they walk through. Do it at the entrance to the aerobridge so the process of scanning boarding passes spreads out the passenger flow.

For cattle class the solution is already in use:




Just get them to swipe their boarding cards instead of the RFID tag