Convert kilograms to pounds

lb = kg × 2.20462262

A fast mental method: double the kilograms, then add 10% of the result. 70 kg → 140 + 14 = 154 lb. The error is under a quarter of a percent.

In July 1983 Air Canada Flight 143, a new Boeing 767, ran out of fuel at 41,000 feet over Manitoba. The aircraft was one of the first in the fleet to measure fuel in kilograms, but the ground crew had worked out the load using the pounds-per-litre factor. The plane took on less than half the fuel it needed. The captain, an experienced glider pilot, landed it without engines on a disused air base at Gimli. Nobody died, and the aircraft — nicknamed the Gimli Glider — flew for another 25 years.

• Checked bags — the 23 kg allowance is 50.7 lb; the US 50 lb limit is 22.7 kg
• Gym plates — a 20 kg barbell is 44.1 lb; a US 45 lb bar is 20.4 kg
• Body weight — 80 kg is 176.4 lb

For 130 years the kilogram was defined by a single platinum-iridium cylinder kept near Paris. In May 2019 it was redefined through the Planck constant, a fixed value of nature, and the cylinder became a historical object. Because the pound is defined from the kilogram, every pound in the world changed definition that day — without changing weight.

Through the Planck constant. The 26th General Conference on Weights and Measures, meeting in 2018, fixed that constant at exactly 6.62607015 × 10⁻³⁴ J·s, and the kilogram has been derived from it since 20 May 2019, as described in the SI Brochure published by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM). The pound is defined from the kilogram — 0.45359237 kg exactly, in NIST Special Publication 811, the US guide to the SI — so a kilogram is 2.20462 pounds.