Reminds me of the first time I flew into Maine.  Nobody told me you flew to Portland and drove anywhere else.  We took a flight from Boston to Augusta.  It was like the airport in Wings.  The gate agent was also the TSA agent and the baggage handler.

When we left there there were some hippos going with us.  The pilot  asked this woman who was at least 300 her weight.  She said 119.  They told her they needed an accurate number to distribute the weight in the plane or it was at risk of crashing in takeoff.  She screams that her license says 119!

It took them 20 minutes of moving luggage around and moving the rest of us around until the pilot eyeballed it and deemed it close enough.

I was white knuckle until we got in the air.

One of my jobs in the Chair Force was to load plan aircraft to achieve “Center of Balance” for optimized flight. This was done with cargo, passengers, and fuel in mind. There’s a sizable target window that you aim for, but it still can take some playing around with all the variables. Got especially tricky when transporting hazardous materials, as their position was by a door that it could be kicked off the aircraft in flight should something go wrong.

I say all that to say that it is very impressive that a lot of pilots can do it on the fly, whereas load planners need a computer program & a rule book to reference. Hope you all clapped once you landed! 

Outbound from Bham to Glendale in January of 2011 with a certain purloiner of headwear.  The plane is fully boarded and the flight attendant starts walking down the aisle, making eye contact.  Cool, upgrade city, baby!

"Would you mind taking a later flight?"
"Say what, now?"
"We're slightly overweight and the manifest shows that you're flying alone, so we thought we'd offer you a voucher to take a later flight."
"A: the lady in the seat next to me will need the same accommodation; and B: I'm not svelte, but if my (then) 185 lb ass is going to make or break this thing getting off the ground, we have MUCH bigger issues."

  In defense of the flight attendant, she (or he) was making an assumption that if you were normal height you’d be 185 x 2.

Outbound from Bham to Glendale in January of 2011 with a certain purloiner of headwear.  The plane is fully boarded and the flight attendant starts walking down the aisle, making eye contact.  Cool, upgrade city, baby!

"Would you mind taking a later flight?"
"Say what, now?"
"We're slightly overweight and the manifest shows that you're flying alone, so we thought we'd offer you a voucher to take a later flight."
"A: the lady in the seat next to me will need the same accommodation; and B: I'm not svelte, but if my (then) 185 lb ass is going to make or break this thing getting off the ground, we have MUCH bigger issues."

Give Token a break. Stamping out crime makes you hungry.

We just listed to the left on takeoff.  No joke.

We were up at the Shakespeare Festival last weekend. Snagette pointed over to our left and said, "No way."

This woman had to go 485 and was about to try and squeeze those hips into a seat.  Remember at the start of Nutty Professor, when Professor Klump gets called into the Dean's office for a conference, and he has to exhale about 5 seconds before his ass can get between the arms of the chair? I'm not sure if she was actually in the seat, or on top of it.

On a similar note, we were thankful it wasn't a sellout, and plenty of seats behind us.  Not sure which one it was, maybe both, but this couple plops down right in front of us, and the body odor was so pungent, I got up and asked the usher to put us somewhere else.  She did, and said that funk hit her on the way in too. 

People, even in this economy, a bar of soap is just not that expensive.  Get it.  Use it!!!