- Japan Airlines laid on an extra flight to accommodate a number of sumo wrestlers last week.
- The group was traveling from Osaka and Tokyo to attend a sports festival, according to local media.
- The wrestlers’ average weight of about 265 pounds raised concerns the planes would be too heavy.
Japan Airlines made a last-minute addition to its flight schedule on Thursday after realizing that a large group of sumo wrestlers were due to take the same two planes to a sports festival, according to local reports.
The wrestlers were traveling from Tokyo and Osaka to attend a national sports festival on the island of Amami, The Japan News reported.
But with each wrestler weighing in at about 265 pounds, the airline became concerned that the two Boeing 737-800s — each with a capacity of 165 passengers — wouldn’t be able to carry enough fuel to accommodate the weight, the paper reported.
The airline calculates that the average passenger weighs about 155 pounds, according to the outlet.
An additional worry was that Amami airport is challenging for large aircraft to land and take off from, it reported.
Ultimately, 27 passengers were asked to join the new flight, with some having to fly from Osaka to Tokyo first, The Japan News reported.
“It is extremely unusual for us to operate special flights due to the weight restrictions on this aircraft,” a spokesperson for the airline told regional newspaper the Minami-Nippon Shimbun, per The Guardian’s translation.
Sumo wrestlers can weigh two to three times the average adult. Despite this, during their working lives they tend not to experience health issues associated with obesity, as Insider’s Gene Kim and Benji Jones previously reported.
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