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Re:Southwest to Stop Overbooking as United Uproar Echoes by LeifCarrotson on Thursday April 27, 2017 @06:56PM (#14215536)
The fuel increase is marginal. You still have to burn fuel to carry that fuel to the next airport. And you have to carry the airframe with capacity for that empty seat. The 100 kg for a passenger+luggage is much less than the fractional weight of the plane required to carry them!

For some numbers, a 777-200 carries 313 passengers, weighs 135k kg, carries up to 100k kg of fuel, and has a max takeoff weight of about 250k kg. 313 passengers and luggage, averaging 100kg, weigh just 31.3k kg. Your ticket therefore pays for your weight, plus 5x your weight in airplane structure, plus (up to) 3x your weight in fuel.

If you don't show up, they're still carrying 8x your weight anyways, so saving 200kg isn't that important.

(PS: apologies for the 'thousands of kg' units. I thought it was more readable than Mg or fully written out numbers.)

Re:Southwest to Stop Overbooking as United Uproar Echoes by nandemo on Thursday April 27, 2017 @09:11PM (#14216185)
> (PS: apologies for the 'thousands of kg' units. I thought it was more readable than Mg or fully written out numbers.)

Just write tonnes (= metric tons)?

Re:Southwest to Stop Overbooking as United Uproar Echoes by linkregister on Thursday April 27, 2017 @09:07PM (#14216170)
thousands of kg is probably the most recognizable unit (besides pounds for those of us with archaic units)