http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Super_Guppy_N941_NASA.jpg

Could the jelly wobble be used as some sort of inertial power source for the airplane?

At least it would make a good scene in what would likely be an otherwise forgettable movie similar to idiocracy.

cheers. rerere

In 1850, the average height of a farmer where I live was 5′4″. Today, it is 6′4″. In neither case is/was obesity an issue. Fit people in physically active occupations do not get fat. And though large, fit people put their weight on in muscle, a denser material than fat.

Flight crews, despite all the computers, still use a manual guide to estimate passenger weight. That weight was until quite recently 150lbs.

Sedentary humans however, tend to get fat. Why? Because they eat the same amount as active humans. Walking from the door to the car, to the store for food, and then watching 6 hours of TV a day at home, as well as 8 hours in front of a computer screen at work, or standing on an assembly line (basically not moving), means they will spread in all directions.

Aside from the disgusting fact of someone having to pull up a roll of fat to get a seat arm down, and then spilling over onto someone else….(shudders), the math is simple:

2000 calories for a moderately active person. Eat less if you are less moderately active. But most people do not do that. They will go for the 500 calorie breakfast, 800 calorie lunch, and the 1300 calorie dinner. They get fat over time. Add the throwaway snacks (chips, choclate bars), and you have a surplus of food for most people.

Eating is such a part of our cultural marketing, from promoting food products, or promoting weight reduction, that it is easy to see how one could fail to see how much eating is a part of our lives. Some people live only to eat. Eating is a necessity, but not in the amounts that we do.

First link, but there are others that explain why eating is such a problem. Did you know that a lot of food calorie counts are underestimated by 20% or more? http://www.slate.com/id/2244499/

That doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things, until you want to fly a heavier-than-air object.

http://www.ntsb.gov/Events/journalist/lessons/LL_Marine_out_of_date_weight_standards.pdf
http://www.pilotfriend.com/training/flight_training/wt_bal.htm <<–150 lbs was an old standard. This is closer to the new one.

If you bother reading the links above, you will notice the discrepancy, and both are recent in transport terms. 30-50 pounds per passenger means a big deal in terms of how the aircraft will handle, not least especially when the pilot uses the wrong numbers. An airplane crashed in southern Ontario a few years ago. The reason? Too many overweight passengers and luggage. Not that the passengers were obese (I'll refrain from 'fat' for now). They, with their gear, were simply too much for the small 20 seater. 30 pounds times 20 passengers equals 600 pounds. The difference between a comfortable takeoff and a breathtaking takeoff followed by an uncontrolled glide into the water. And 23 deaths including the crew.

If you fly on 50 seaters, it might be only 1200 pounds that is the difference, while on a 200 seater, 5000 pounds. Dead weight is dead weight. Somehow it has to get off the ground.

Why should I, as a 155lb person, not be offended personally when a behemoth of 300lbs not only attempts to sit beside me, but is also measured in terms of seat capacity the same as I am? Sometimes I think we should all be individually weighed so the flight crew knows exactly what the weight of the plane is before they start the engines. Or else a basic seat fare plus weight with no deductions if you are under weight.

Bottom line, if you don't fit into your seat, you buy more than one seat. I'm sorry if weight is your disability, but physics doesn't care. And neither do I. I paid for my seat and the ability to get off the ground safely.

On top of this, airplane seats actually have gotten smaller in the past 30-40 years by several inches. So yeah, people are, on average, a bit bigger (though not as much bigger as we want to believe – it’s more like 10-20 lbs.) and the seats are smaller.