So I get on my delayed flight home last night. It had been quite a while since I had been on a flight where we weren’t given any information on a delay, and I was quite disappointed with how we were treated. Our flight was listed as “on time” even though we had reached the scheduled boarding time but there wasn’t a plane to board. Even when the inbound flight arrived 30 minutes late, we still weren’t told anything and the flight was still listed as “on time.”

But the weirdness really occured when we boarded the plane. Just before pushing back from the gate the Captain gets on the intercom and announces that it appears that we didn’t take on as much baggage as they had expected, so they had a heavier load of fuel than they had expected. He said it would be “faster” if four passengers from rows 1-12 moved to seats in the back of the plane instead of moving baggage around, and that the passengers would only need to sit back there during takeoff.

Once we took off and got up to around 10,000 feet the Captain got back on the intercom and asked that those four passengers move back forward again before he completed his climb out.

Now, I understand how important it is for an airplane to be properly balanced in order for safe flight, but I also wasn’t flying on a little regional jet. This was an Airbus A-320, it’s a decent sized jet, so I wouldn’t think that where 4 passengers sat on a mostly full flight would affect the balance of the aircraft all that much…