My recent sleazyjet experience cropped up during a fireworks do last night and I mentioned how on both outward and return flights, rows of seats were ‘shut’ to passengers.  There was no seat allocation but cabin crew directed us to particular rows.  They said we needed to spread around the plane to maintain balance because there were only 60 passengers. They’d put down the table things so we couldn’t sit in certain seats.

“HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHA!!!” laughed the others.

“Er? What’s so funny?”

“HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAAHAHAHA!!!”

“HOW HEAVY is a plane compared to people?” asked Tracy.

“They were having a laugh!” Mike chuckled, “Must be such a boring job. They decided to have a laugh and see if you lot would fall for it. On both journeys!”

“HAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHHAHAHAHAAH!!!”

“I think they were serious,” I said.

More laughter.

“Maybe it’s a cleaning issue; they don’t have enough time to clean the whole plane so shut off the dirty bits?” Fran offered.

“When I flew back on BA once it was half empty and we were spread around, but that was so we all had plenty of leg space,” said Tracy, wiping her eyes.

“Mmm.” I said, not convinced. “I’ll investigate and get back to you”.

So, I’ve had a bit of a read of pilot forums (definitely not recommended for the nervous flyer) and here are some online discussions and information about this.  It’s a balance issue.