'Unless it's a small airliner where statistics would not be in their favor, they're mostly weighing your bags to extract money from you,' Anderson said. Unless you're flying on a tiny 'puddle-jumper' plane, airlines use a standard, assumed weight for their passengers and the baggage that comes aboard. I'm lumping these together because they have a key commonality: The actual weight of you and your bags doesn't matter when it comes to these calculations Airport check-in counters (Photo by Matthias Balk/picture alliance via Getty Images)