Can you imagine waiting at the gate to board a flight but being told that before you can get on, your weight needs to be recorded?

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Before you think that there is no way anything like this could ever happen, it apparently has.

Lillian, who goes by the username @lilwessel on TikTok, recently uploaded a photo of a woman standing on what appeared to be a baggage claim scale as an airport employee looked on and the world took notice.

Apparently, the plane that the passengers were boarding was a small one, and airport staff said that they needed to know how much each passenger weighed before they could board. The woman in the photo shared to TikTok claimed to be 130 pounds and airport personnel allegedly called her out, saying she was lying about her weight and made her stand on the scale to get an accurate weight.

How completely humiliating for the woman.

Comments on the TikTok upload ranged from feeling deeply sorry for the woman in the picture to stories of also having to be weighed, to comments about understanding that when flying on small planes, weight is an important safety factor.

The recent post of the woman being made to be weighed made us wonder – can and will New York airlines weigh passengers before allowing them to board, especially on small aircraft?

The answers are mixed.

Business Insider says that although passengers are getting heavier and airlines have set new weight rules, the FAA told them that airlines could weigh passengers, but that “most companies would use other methods” before resorting to weighing a person.

Henry Harteveldt of the Atmosphere Research Group told Business Insider that weighing passengers is highly unlikely to happen. "Airlines do not ask passengers how much they weigh, and they're not about to start doing so."

Interestingly though, Newsweek reports that due to the new weight rules and limits, the FAA needs to have a better idea of the amount of weight an aircraft is taking on but “has promised to keep individual's weight private, even if they have to mount scales at departure gates.

Verify reports that the FAA told them that weighing passengers absolutely can be done and has been an option for quite some time but that it doesn’t expect airlines actually will on a regular basis.

So, the answer to the question of whether or not New York airlines can weigh a person before allowing them to board a plane appears to be that they can but you can let out that breath you’ve been holding in because the chances an airline actually will weigh you are quite slim.

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