The flight from Toronto to Philadelphia is only 1:35.
After encountering my defective seat, I moved to the unoccupied exit row.
Immediately, the flight attendant asked if I was having trouble finding my seat. I explained that the velcro on my seat had come off, and I thought it would be better if I sat in the exit row. She explained that the plane had to be balanced based on weight and told me to return to my assigned seat. I complied without argument.
I don’t believe that she was being honest. I’ve been on planes where I am weighed in advance (see TPOL’s Worst Flight Experiences). I also do not believe that this plane was small enough where weight makes a difference. But what do I know?
Weight and balance is a fun one…. So yes, it’s unlikely you moving would have any impact whatsoever. But because weights are standardized by the FAA, simple counts by zone of aircraft (a number of rows, plane is probably divided into 3) is needed for the computer to “compute.”
Aircraft over a certain size (basically over 20 seats or a certain gross weight) in airline service use an average weight… we all weigh the same. They do break into male/female but that’s another whole topic so the weights are blended into just adult or child (can you imagine the TikTok explosion over a flight attendant walking around asking people if they are man or woman?) so every one of us weighs 190 lbs in the summer and 195 lbs in the winter, including our in-cabin carryon bags and coats (why the extra 5 in the winter). Oh yeah, and any bags in the cargo hold are 30 lbs (unless marked as heavy in which case they’re usually 50 unless a specific weight was captured).
Since it’s been sort of dumbed down to make it easy and fast, and to avoid a Lilytino misgender meltdown on every flight, typically the weight and balance is set so that the pilots either receive or key in number of adults/children per zone and then voila, there’s the takeoff settings. If it doesn’t meet the “we have 40 people on board, so have to have them seated with 15 in zone 1, 15 in zone 2, 10 in zone 3” criteria, does not compute. So yeah, moving one person by one row can make it not compute. Can’t violate that because well, if you crash, suddenly a contributing factor is weight and balance protocol not followed, assuming they can DNA match what’s melted to the remains of the seat and figure out what row it was.
Fun part is when airlines make you check carry-ons at the gate… they now go from being part of your 190 lbs to a 30 lbs checked bag. I know often Delta or United will make an effort on the 737s especially to not gate check roller bags and fit them all because they are “weight optimized” and can’t afford adding a few hundred more pounds, even though in reality the aircraft weight doesn’t change.
Wow! Interesting and helpful! Why can’t more people have insightful comments?