News Weight concerns: JAL transferred sumo rikishi to other flight

The sumo rikishi were scheduled to take Boeing 737-800 flights from Haneda airport in Tokyo and Itami airport in Osaka to Amami Oshima, an island in the far south, where they were due to compete in a sports festival, the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper said. Concern over fuel capacity emerged when staff learned late on Thursday that the passenger lists included sumo wrestlers, whom they estimated weighed an average of 120kg – far more than the 70kg average, the Yomiuri said. The Amami airport runway would have struggled to accommodate a larger aircraft, the newspaper said, forcing JAL to lay on an additional service for 27 wrestlers, including 14 who had to fly from Itami to Haneda to board the special flight. "It is extremely unusual for us to operate special flights due to the weight restrictions on this aircraft," a JAL spokesperson told the regional newspaper the Minami-Nippon Shimbun.

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