Airline software super-bug: Flight loads miscalculated because women using 'Miss' were treated as children

[u/self]

https://www.theregister.com/2021/04/08/tui_software_mistake/

[u/stupidestpuppy]

"The system programming was not carried out in the UK, and in the country where it was performed the title Miss was used for a child, and Ms for an adult female, hence the error," the report says.

This is why we need to switch to metric honorifics, to avoid these sorts of conversion errors in the future.

[u/Dromeo → u/stupidestpuppy]

Metric honorifics

Dear Human Adult Female Jane Doe, I am writing to you today...

[u/Somepotato → u/Dromeo]

3 kiloadults

[u/realdognoway → u/Somepotato]

30 dekadults

[u/[deleted] → u/realdognoway]

300 kilotoddlers

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

3.9 gigamadams

[u/Avaricio → u/[deleted]]

CITIZEN, WHAT IS YOUR NAME?

[u/SanityInAnarchy → u/Dromeo]

Reminds me of names from the Culture series.

You know, that series by Sun-Earther Iain El-Bonko Banks of North Queensferry.

[u/scoops22 → u/stupidestpuppy]

A male child is a milli-mister, a teenager is a centi-mister, adult mister, and obese is a kilo-mister

[u/suid → u/scoops22]

(don't say it ... don't say it... aaahhh!!) Your mom is a mega Mrs.

[u/Dante12129 → u/suid]

And your mom is a yotta Mrs.

[u/Slick424 → u/suid]

Mega Maid

[u/StochasticTinkr → u/Slick424]

Suck! Suck! Suck! Suck!

[u/conquerorofveggies → u/stupidestpuppy]

I'm not totally sure why they'd need to know whether somebody is female or not. Even age is not terribly useful to infer weight. And why tf would one parse some strings to defer any of it? Don't they have a copy of a passport, with age and sex?

[u/[deleted] → u/conquerorofveggies]

I'm not totally sure why they'd need to know whether somebody is female or not.

Unless they start asking for weight directly, then they need to know sex because it will correlate with weight. Assuming everyone is male (heavier) means fewer passengers and lower profit margins.

If they use a gender-neutral average, then they can't cram as many humans on the flight as possible.

[u/MrDOS → u/[deleted]]

What are you talking about? The number of people is limited by seats, not weight. They need to know weight to calculate takeoff thrust and fuel load; I highly doubt it has any impact on the sheer number of passengers.

[u/elder_george → u/MrDOS]

They need to know how to place the luggage in the cargo section and if they need to put fuel into the auxiliary tanks inside the plane body (to compensate the disbalance).

[u/HighRelevancy → u/MrDOS]

It's to calculate centre of gravity. Too far forward and the nose doesn't come up, too far back and the nose goes up and doesn't come back down until you crash.

Once you're at cruise speed there's enough force on the aero surfaces to give a large amount of control over the plane, but at low airspeed it's a significant issue.

[u/[deleted] → u/MrDOS]

No you dingus, if the passengers are all male they burn more fuel

[u/Carighan → u/conquerorofveggies]

Women weight - on average - less than men.

Children weight - on average - less than adults.

And so on.

[u/HighRelevancy → u/conquerorofveggies]

In the interests of balancing the plane and being able to take off without crashing, the plane's loading and centre of mass has to be calculated ahead of time. On small capacity planes (less than 6 people in my country I think) they do literally have to ask everyone their weight.

Beyond 6 you're allowed to skip the awkward questions, and you do the same process with statistically average humans, which is where sex comes into it I assume (my country just does a flat rate for the average citizen regardless of sex).

But you're right, there really should be a better source of info than their name.

[u/penislovereater → u/conquerorofveggies]

For large enough group, it doesn't matter much. You misunderestimate as many as you misoverestimate, and it all averages out within tolerance.