Yes, but

Time for me to say this again:
THE WEIGHT LIMIT ON LUGGAGE IS TO PROTECT BAGGAGE HANDLERS FROM INJURY. IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH TAKE OFF OR LANDING WEIGHT.
- So there's a weight limit on how far handers throw the luggage around?
  
  If you are there handling heavy items all day, you're gonna get injured. That doesn't just fuck up the workers (meaning they can't go to work) but it costs the company money too (because they need to replace those handlers).
  Think of it like this, you know how the X-Ray tech has to go into a little shielded room while you are getting X-Rayed, but you are still exposed to the full force of the X-Ray? That's not because they care about their safety more than yours, it's because one x-ray is fine (what your getting), but the x-ray tech does tens, maybe hundreds a day, and that builds up to radiation poisoning.
  Now replace "X-Ray Radiation" with Repetitive Strain and back injuries" and "X-Ray" with the Suitcase full of Drugs your smuggling into the Netherlands, and you get the idea.
  
  Yes. Can't have them hurting themselves and causing delays because the airport won't staff appropriately. Remember, safety is for controlling costs.
- I appreciate that you're clarifying with facts, in the social mediaverse that revolves around stubborn preconceptions.
- Then why does a first class ticket come with a higher weight limit?
  
  Because they wanna fleece you for every penny you have, but the point still stands that for the most part it's to protect baggage handlers. If you wanna take a dead body on board you have to take that up with the airline.
- Then why can i book heavyweight with some airlines?
  
  Because they can mark the luggage has heavyweight so the handlers can use equipment to load the items.
  
  Team lift, you're paying for a second guy to help load that.
  
  Incentivizing lower weights in some bags is helpful. Ninety 19 lbs bags and ten 35 lbs bags is easier on baggage handlers than a hundred 35 lbs bags
  
  Money
- I had no idea, thank you
- If that's all it is, then just slap a bright red tag on the over weight bags to warn the handlers. Right?
  
  Now every single bag is overweight and they have to lift all of them all day. I suspect a few is ok but they really want to discourage too many of them so they are not lifting too many heavy weights all day.
  
  Not quite.
  You know how X-Ray Techs go into a little room to protect themselves while you get your x-ray? That's because while you are only getting one (1) x-ray, maybe two (2), they have to do tens or hundreds a day, and the raditation levels from that can cause them harm, while you getting one or two x-rays is fine.
  Now replace x-ray with your overweight bag filled with cheap Scotch you got from the Duty Free at EDI and "Radiation" with knee and back injuries from doing that over and over again for eight hours a day, and you can see why both the Unions and the Companies would object to unlimited baggage weight for passengers as workers will be out of work from injuries and companies will have to pay them compensation and find someone to replace them.
  If individual passenger weight was enough to prevent take off, then very few people would be able to fly.

I don't know why this keeps getting posted everywhere. Workers have a lift limit the extra cost is for the extra person to handle the bag.
- Ah! I didn’t think about that.
- I'd also suspect humans on a plane will follow a normal distribution in terms of weight. The aircraft weight/loading is done on an average sized person (which used to be 75kg if I remember correctly). Conversely every motherfucker will load their luggage with as much shit as possible if it's not limited.
- So how about allowing 2 bags instead?
  
  Some airlines do allow two bags.
  
  Then what will they upcharge you for?
  
  That's still double the work.
- Good point. Upvote rescinded!
- Cabin bags have a weight limit too
  
  Cabin bags have a size limit, but I've never seen one weighed.
  
  Probably so they don't kill anyone when they fall out of an overhead bin.
  
  They don't want anyone trying to smuggle all those neutron star packages
- Ah, but, who's going to lift the passenger!
  
  Passengers, while often stupid, are usually self loading.
- If I pay an extra €50 to go from 19kg to 23kg, does the worker get paid more?
  Thought not.
  
  No they pay 2 workers
- US vs Worker Rights
  Thus, the meme
- Does the luggage handler receive the money then?
  
  Well, if there’s two of them, yes?
- For a carry-on? Is that not what they are measuring in the image?
  
  Nope. Why would you weigh a carry-on in the area with a conveyor belt? That is clearly the desk where you hand over the checked baggage.
  
  No, carry on is usally max 8 kg.

OSHA.
The throwers have a union to stop them from killing themselves, which means we don't give them 40kg things to break their backs regularly and anything over 22kgs they buddy lift or get a hoist or something.
Thought it was just airlines being airlines too, but this makes complete sense, don't be dicks about other people's health.
- i was in favor of total weight based pricing, but this changed my mind.
  may the backs of the people kicking around my luggage be in perfect health
  
  Same, went from 'you greedy mother-fuckers' to 'I am right with you fam'.
  Amazed they don't explain it more, it makes them actually seem human for once.

But the human is self loading cargo. The bag is not.

Can I get the exact same picture but with an obese fat woman and a sexy male athlete, please? Or would that be inappropriate?

This is a dumb meme, for a few reasons.

I've always assumed you pay extra because multiple people have to carry the bag around after you check it, and that's harder/more dangerous at higher weights.
In warehouses, you gotta go get your lift belt and often a partner if something is over a certain weight, and you aren't covered by workman's comp if you just try to do it quickly without those, so it's a serious hassle.
- I always assumed it was more about the conveyors and such your bag goes through before even getting to those folks. Heavier bags mean more wear and tear and maintenance on those machines.
  Honestly, it's probably a little bit of both along with just deterring some cohort of people from bringing too much stuff because they don't want to pay the fees.
- It's weight on the plane that costs more. Takes more fuel.
  
  The extra fuel cost doesn't even remotely compare to the cost of an injured baggage handler and their lost wages.

How is that logical that the man should pay extra cause he's bigger/taller but small people should get extra luggage bonus?
Not even taking into account that this very short lady will be far more comfortable during the flight than the gentleman.
- Its not logical - Weight limits aren't there for the flight, they're there so the luggage handlers don't injure themselves
  
  Weight limits are critical for the flight. An overweight plane can fail to take off. The more weight in passengers a plane carries, the more weight in fuel they need to add. This extra fuel weight also requires more fuel to carry it. And so on and so on.
  There’s a tipping point with weight of passengers and cargo combined with flight duration where the plane becomes uneconomical to fly. Planes have crashed on takeoff because they were overweight but the weight was miscalculated. Temperature and weather also play a role.
  
  Of course... What airline companies are most concerned about is the well being of their luggage handlers.
  Even if they claim that this is one of the reasons, it's a by product of cost management.
- Adding to that, people need to load all those suitcases in. The man doesn't get carried into the plane.
- The logic being that there is ~$0.82 USD per KG of fuel cost that has to be accounted for

Well, no employee is going to be expected to physically lift me and every other passenger at any point, but they will have to lift all of our checked baggage, so it feels like my weight matters less than my luggage's weight.
- I don't want to "well actually" but I'm disabled and need to be pushed in my chair through the airport and to + down the gate corridor. Every time I arrive at the plane door, someone greets me from the plane and asks "do you need help (boarding the plane)". Luckily I can hobble with my cane for short distances, so I don't need to be carried like I'm going to the bedroom in a romcom, but they do have staff that can aid with that...
  Now I'm imagining a plane full of disabled people all being carried. Boarding time, 11a, departure, 3p. 😋
  
  Your imagination isn't accounting for all the insanity that people loading themselves do. Loading might be faster for the carried folks.
  
  That's fair. Now I wonder how liability works with that since they could hurt themselves and you in the process. And surely they are people that just cannot be lifted by one person.

No matter what size you are, you can wear a jacket with as many pockets as you want. Travel cheaper by looking like an vaudeville ex-army doomsday prepper with all your underwear stuffed into pockets of oversized cargo pants, three layers of socks and an entire towel as a toga shirt over your other shirts.
Pro-tip: If you have a greasy paper bag they'll think it's food and won't charge you for a carry-on.
- Dude, I barely fit in the seats now with my phone in my pocket and you want me to carry a weeks worth of clothing and travel sized toiletries on my person?
  
  There's plenty of space on your shoulders and head.
  
  Fly without a bag. At destination, purchase clothing. At end of week, return clothes for refund. No cost, no cleaning, no hassle!
- I did that once with camera gear. I stuffed lenses in all my pockets because my carry on bag was too heavy. "There, 5 kg off, happy ?"
- I'm always cold when flying, so I just layer up. Jeans, sweatpants, short sleeve, long sleeve, sweater, jacket, hat. Then, I put various items in my various pockets. Phone, earbuds, snack bars, bar of soap, small articles of clothing, maybe a tshirt in my jacket pocket, a shoe in each sweatpants pocket. The rest goes in my carry on, no luggage fees.
  
  You must be the person who's always in front of me at the line for the security scanners!
- They totally wont select you during security check either

Tell ya what. Make it as easy for me to pop off a pound as it is for someone else to take a hair dryer out of their luggage and I will happily pay for all the extra boobs I bring on board after I remove the weight everywhere else.

Energy scarcity and our atmosphere could be helped by charging by the kilo gram. There are people who take it as an incentive to get as close as possible to the limit, increasing the weight of the loaded aircraft!
- It isn’t about the weight of the aircraft but the person loading the luggage in the belly of the aircraft.

"Any time you think it's not about the money, it's about the money."

Mahatma Gandhi
- No, it's about baggage handlers not wanting to have to load your heavy ass luggage when they have a whole planes worth to get to.
  
  They'll gladly take your overweight bag if you give them extra...money. The airlines don't care about baggage handlers.

the big question is, how many small women can fit in each suitcase?
- 2 but you have to cut them up first.

Y'all, the overhead bins and the seats have different weight ratings. If has nothing to do with the overall weight of the plane, they just don't want the bins to come crashing down on your head mid-flight.
- Checked bags don't go in the overhead bin.
  
  The checked bag weight limit is to protect the worker who has to lift 100s of bags per day.
  
  My carry-ons have always gotten weighed, as well as my checked bags. I've not flown in about 15 years, so maybe that's not as common now?

Y'all, these comments are not it. How are you more upset about fat people than how the airlines have given all our leg room and storage space to first class/business class?
- The problem also exists on planes that don't have separate classes. It's not directly about class warfare in this case.

I don't trust airlines with my weight data
- "One second, I just need to update some details before I can give you your boarding pass..."
  types into the terminal 'customer wouldn't let me weigh them, probably a fat fuck, recommend full body search at security checkpoint for contraband meals and soda'
  "Here you go, sorry about the delay, have a lovely day"

Oh. Just you wait.

Stupid

There's a simple solution to this, did you figure it out?
- Mix everyone up in a big cauldron then shoot the mixture via cannon. Did I get it?
  
  Yes. Modern problems require modern solutions.
- Steal the plane for yourself, that way you get there faster and with no annoying people and babies.
  GTA has taught me well.
  
  I would do that, but I can't afford the tariffs

Gotta save weight for those special passengers

Airlines should charge a passenger based on weight. More weight means more fuel and more wear and tear, meaning higher costs.
They would make more money in America and the UK, how they don't capitalize on those untapped profits makes no sense.
- I think the negative publicity would kill them.
  
  Yeah even Ryan Air tried proposing this and got roundly shunned.
  Mostly because they'd lose their core customer base of Gammon export to Majorca.
  And on behalf of the rest of the UK, my sincerest apologies to Spain. Please feel free to dispose of those cunts, nobody will miss them and you'd be doing us both a favour.
  
  "are you tired of battling for personal space? does your seatmate steal your in-flight lunch? does the thought of constant snacking make your skin crawl? fear no more, Nofatass Air is here! at NA, we too have endured the pain and suffering of traditional airfare. with our state-of-the-art ejection system, undesirable passengers can be dealt with at the touch of a button. and our patented seat-scale technology means that this can be automated; great for letting our flight attendants relax. the best part? there is no change in pricing - since we have already taken payment before boarding, we have already profited when we eject someone at 35,000 feet! visit nofatass.air and start enjoying travel again, today!"
  
  No it wouldn't, if the industry as a whole started pricing based on weight, travellers aren't going to start taking trains and ships.
  If a minority of airlines didn't switch, they would get more passengers that would save money by going with them and would ultimately fail in the market.
  If a minority of airlines switched, they would decrease costs and very few people would decide against saving money on airfair on principle.
  The big airlines switching would have a new means to increase profits and decrease costs, which they love.
  Yes, the media will drag them through the mud and social media would have a tantrum, but the airlines would profit because nobody is going to decide 3 days on a train is better than 6 hours on a plane.
- Obviously, your ticket buys you an allotted space, being one chair worth.
  Planes can carry a variable amount of weight but space is static / not variable.
  Given that weight is distributed normally, air lines would be upsetting everyone aside from a few skinny people, just to discount fares for those skinny people.
  It doesn't make any sense from a business / marketing perspective.

THE WEIGHT LIMIT ON LUGGAGE IS TO PROTECT BAGGAGE HANDLERS FROM INJURY. IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH TAKE OFF OR LANDING WEIGHT.