It's very hard to be tactful in those situations. You can start by explaining briefly weight & balance issues, then explain to them about you being able to use the controls, i.e. flaps, mixture, cowl flaps, yoke, etc. Big deal breaker that has always worked for me is SEAT BELTS!!! If they can't get the belt around their fat ass and gut without a seat belt extension, sorry- "safety of flight" and the rules.

It's no mystery, the fat people know they are fat.

I just say nicely your going to have to sit here, or if I cant take them I say "I can only carry a extra xxx lbs" (heck I bet they know why before they ask the question), thats that, no matter how much they point their sausage sized fingers and get mad 1+1 will always = 2 no matter how nasty they get math is math.




I dont bother with the huge weight and balance lesson, this seats takes this, fuel is this, these are the regs, etc, no one cares and it just draws this whole scene out, this keeps it short and sweet.

I almost lost my coffee reading this thread!! I flew a 330lb guy in a T-41C one time. I could hear the seat frame begging for forgiveness as he tried to slide his way in. Had to put 50lbs of sand in the baggage area to keep us in the forward CG range. Would have been a bit awkward having only two people in the plane one in front and one in back lol. He suddenly gained 40 lbs when he saw me punching buttons on the calculator and running the chart in the POH. I think that's more of an issue than anything else. Make sure you stress the importance of accurate numbers to people.

AvidFlyer wrote: He suddenly gained 40 lbs when he saw me punching buttons on the calculator and running the chart in the POH. I think that's more of an issue than anything else. Make sure you stress the importance of accurate numbers to people.

There's the rub see, a guy will fess up about his weight but you can't waterboard the truth out of a fat woman. They'll risk dying in a fiery plane crash. Even a skinny 100 pounder will report 90, a 200 pounder, 160 and a 300 pounder will start a rabbit trail conversation about being "big boned" and leave it up to the pilot to guess the fuel displacement.

I fly a village that has three people over 500#, probably another three over 400, and countless over 300, and it has a population of 250 give or take. The cool thing is they grow up on 206s so no explanations about w&B necessary. The other funny thing is for as large as they are they can get in and out of the 206 with great agility. I take a half ton of soda pop to the village and bring two 500s out....

Sat the 11th will be my first EAA Young Eagles event, I almost fell off my chair reading this thread. The comment about, learn to fly porky, made me think “when pigs fly” and once again I laughed so hard that I cried. All kidding aside,,,,do you think that there will be any 90-110 pounders with nice,,uh lungs?
Seriously I think that I will make up a bunch of weight and balance sheets and just plug in the numbers.

172heavy wrote:Sat the 11th will be my first EAA Young Eagles event, I almost fell off my chair reading this thread. The comment about, learn to fly porky, made me think “when pigs fly” and once again I laughed so hard that I cried. All kidding aside,,,,do you think that there will be any 90-110 pounders with nice,,uh lungs?
Seriously I think that I will make up a bunch of weight and balance sheets and just plug in the numbers.

If you have an iPad, flightscale has an ap for weight and balance.
There is also some online that you could find by googling "weight and balance".
The nice thing about using a computer is you can easily play with numbers ahead of time.
I have found that with a Stinson or a C180 you have to load in a very unusual way to get out of bounds.

I just tell Rob to skooch his fat ass over!