I find it very hard to agree that a PA-32 was "designed to realistically seat 7 adults". I don't think they even imagined 6 adults as a typical cabin load, but rather a max of 4 adults and 2 kids and a typical of 2 adults and 2-4 kids. It is one of the more roomy cabins among light singles, but every one of them that I see for listed for sale right now is configured with seating for only 6, which is great for 2 adults and a few kids.

The point of the person you're replying to is that people have gotten bigger, which is a fact. Pointing out the comfort of levels of people in airplanes today doesn't dispute that.

It used to be more common to have a flexible combination of seats/baggage/fuel. But pilots flip out (or crash) if they can't fill the tanks, every seat and the baggage compartment and come in under gross. So the same airplanes often don't have the "bonus seats" they used to.

Numbers from Wikipedia, from the 1972 PA-32 owners handbook:

3,400 lb gross - 1,788 empty - (4 hours * 15gph * 6 lbs) / 7 passengers = 178 lbs per passenger. The average adult in the 70s was about 160. So you're not going across the country, but you could safely do a day trip with a 90 minute flight each way.

Now the average adult is 180. And they're a little taller than they were in the 70s, but not much. So every passenger has an extra 20 pounds horizontally. So in 2021, you'd be just over gross except that the people can't actually fit in the airplane.

Have you ever seen the optional 7th seat for a PA-32? It makes for 3-across in the back row which makes the backseat of a 911 look positively roomy.

I just looked at photos. Yes, it's very small.

Here's a Piper ad from 1966 with seven adults and their bags: https://i.imgur.com/fWyArRH.png

"The SIX will carry up to seven adults and their luggage - in real comfort"

And here's an ad from 1969 with six adults in it (and some rifles. a different time!) https://i.imgur.com/kGMrENf.png

I can't read into the minds of the engineers who made the airplane. Maybe it's true "I don't think they even imagined 6 adults as a typical cabin load". But we can see that the marketing department at least tried to make people think it was.

The useful load of a PA-32 is about 1500 lbs, so yes, you can put 7 180-lb adults in it and still have a little margin. What you cannot do is carry 7 adults plus their bags plus full fuel. Even without bags, you could not go very far with a full plane.

Some planes have more margin: the Cessna 182 for example is a four-seater and can carry full fuel plus 800 lbs, so you really can load it up with four people plus bags and still go somewhere.

But all planes will be close to their operating limits when fully loaded. Even a jetliner will typically be very close to its operating limits on takeoff and pilots have to pay very close attention to this. If you think about it, this has to be the case. If it weren't, the plane would have been over-designed and much more expensive than it has to be, and so it would lose to the competition.

Yeah, its 7 seats in the same sense as the Tesla Model Y can be a 7 seater. Its technically true, but really only true if some of those people are small.

Even with FAA standard people it would be small for 7.

You're probably right -- I likely have the number wrong. In fact, I was able to find the craft in a database online (still reporting my Dad's corporation as the owner, so it's not perfect) and it indicated 6.

I recall him saying 7, but that was a few decades ago (the plane was destroyed by its new owners in 2006, and I hadn't flown in it since a few years prior to that). :)

Not so much overlooked as omitted ... I had originally written "average American adults" but I didn't want to distract into the territory of "how bad our diets are in this country".

My Dad almost always flew alone. So much so that when the plane was packed and we were making an approach into the Sandusky, OH airport, we had a sudden "dip" on the way down that everyone noticed (we were headed to Cedar Pointe, so it was preparation, I guess). My Dad explained that he wasn't used to landing with so much weight and hadn't adjusted the trim correctly[0].

[0] If it wasn't abundantly clear, all of my flying experience ended at about age 17, which was a while ago, and I was never a pilot, so to the extent that I get any of this wrong -- that's why :)

There's also the fact that an aircraft like that may be able to carry 7 adults in some conditions. If you're at sea level in cold dry weather[0], then you'll have a lot more performance available than if you're trying to take off from Denver airport on a hot summer day just after a load of rain. There have been (usually light) aircraft that have crashed on takeoff/landing because the pilot didn't take the hot day into account, the minimum flying speed was higher than they expected, and the engine performance was too low.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Density_altitude

Wrong - most singles can’t fill the seats and the tanks. This is general aviation 101 folks

This sounds like backcountry tent sizing. 3-person tent! (Good luck fitting two people in there and anything else!)

Over-sizing vehicles for the intended cargo is far more of an upscale suburb thing than a BFE thing.

Apparently normal humans weighed less than 150 pounds until we discovered McDonalds.

I think the average US soldier in WWII weighed less than 150. People were a little shorter then too though.

If you can fill the seats and the tanks (and be legal), I'd say someone made your tanks too small.

6 * 1.18 = 7.08 people, so that could explain 1 adult.

I think the "some adults, some kids" is more significant - similar to back seats in many small cars - you can put 3 passengers in there, but 3 adults won't be happy.

Nor will three rangy step-siblings.