Faulty Airline Weighing Scales

April 2008: Airports in the UK are incorrectly enforcing excess baggage charges on passengers because of faulty weighing scales according a recent investigation by Trading Standards.

Following numerous complaints from suspicious passengers, random spot checks of baggage weighing machines were carried out at Gatwick airport, where officials learnt that almost one-fifth of the baggage weighing machines gave out false readings.

Trading Standards discovered that many scales were set to 5kg before bag had even been weighed, and staff had failed to "zero" the scales before placing on baggage. As a result large numbers of travellers would have been unfairly charged excess fees for baggage items that may have otherwise been underweight.

Bruce Treloar, Lead Officer on Travel Issues for Trading Standards, said that the investigation had revealed the scales at Gatwick to be "more than six times worse than the rate that would be expected for supermarket scales".

Mr. Treloar stated, "There was a need for more frequent independent checking of the accuracy of airport scales".

Airport weighing scales are subject to a lot of use and often require, regular scale calibration. When checking in baggage at airports, it is advisable that passengers make sure that scales are on zero before the baggage weighing begins.

Suspicions on scale accuracy should be raised with the government funded Consumer Direct website.