Flight attendant loses job for being less than 1kg overweight | Hacker News Reader

Flight attendant loses job for being less than 1kg overweight

news.com.au

So converting to imperial - she's 5'2, 136 pounds? That sounds like a very normal sized woman to me. I can't help but notice that she's been with the airline for 25 years and wonder if that's the real issue here, especially given the number of airlines listed in the article of not having similar weight guidelines. While perhaps this is a field necessitating certainly height / weight restrictions, this doesn't really sound like an individual who's a particular outlier in either of those areas.

I don't think "very normal" is what we should accept. In an emergency, flight attendants need strength and speed. They should look like decathlon winners.

Decathlon winners usually have other jobs. You may have to expand your search, lest you prefer having no flight attendant at all.

Has there been a single case in the US in the last decade where having a star athlete flight attendant would have saved someone’s life? I can’t think of one.

They should look like decathlon winners, think like brain surgeons and make minimum wage.

It's not unheard of for airlines to discriminate based on age (which is what I thing you're saying here). An acquaintance of mine was part of a lawsuit about this very thing in Australia in the early 2000s - https://www.theage.com.au/business/virgin-blue-loses-age-dis...

If there's a threshold, it doesn't make sense to make an exception for a person who is over the threshold, regardless of the amount. because if you did that, you just redefined the threshold (by induction, we can see this would permit people with infinite weight...)

This isn't the case. By moving the threshold less and less each time they could keep moving it indefinitely while remaining below a chosen upper bound.

but that would just converge on the chosen upper bound, which suggests that upper bound was the threshold.

Well true but you don't have to accept all the people who reach the final threshold until you've actually raised it all that way, so it allows you to reject more people while avoiding nasty near misses. It also allows you to defer the final decision indefinitely, taking into account only those near misses that actually occur.

For example I reckon you could get it to converge by e.g. accepting anyone who comes closer to the threshold than anyone before, this could avoid all near misses (for some definition of 'near miss') while almost certainly remaining bounded (unproven, ask your local mathematician for advice).

His point is valid though. If the cut off is 100 lbs and allow for 1 lbs more, then it really is is 101 lbs. Someone weighing 102 would still be fired and so on.

Maybe older people have more problem keeping weight off (evolution) so this is also a way to keep them fit and young. I get the BMI thing not being accurate but then, maybe they don't want "big-boned" or muscular women there.

Recently I was on an airplane where the flight attendant couldn’t walk down the aisles without jostling the seats on both sides. I think a weight threshold (or possibly a horizontal-span threshold) is reasonable for this occupation.

Sometimes it feels like British Airways must have a minimum BMI requirement for female flight attendants.

"160cm-tall Ms Hassim, that meant her weight could be no greater than 61kg"

61kg is NOT a healthy weight for this height, BMI is a crock

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106268...

Indeed, it’s pretty much overweight.

Only slightly from a medical standpoint, and a fair way from being obese.

Yeah BMI doesn't always work.

Sometimes you can get short people who are carrying lots of muscle and their BMI is off. I know a guy like this, he's never juiced a day in his life and is ripped as hell but his BMI says he is obese, which is laughable if you look at him.

BMI doesn't work for people who workout. But it does work for the average person since the vast majority of people do not work out.

I am 161(.5) cm and range between 110-115 lb (50-52kg) and I am perfectly healthy...? By bmi and by several doctors opinions. Or do you mean 62kg is too heavy? I think it's the upper end of normal.

Flight attendants should be able to rescue the 99th percentile passengers.

This means carrying the passenger, unconscious or screaming, to the door of the aircraft and beyond. There may be rough ground or water. The passenger should be moved to safety, well beyond any fuel slick or fire.

I don't think you understand the job of flight attendants.

One under each arm? I think you are flying a student airline to me.

The 95th percentile for women is about 260 lb., for men about 285. I am not a small man, but at my fittest around age 30, I would have had a hell of a time getting somebody that weight out of an airline seat and out the door as dead or resisting weight.

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