[travisjungroth]

I just looked at photos. Yes, it's very small.

Here's a Piper ad from 1966 with seven adults and their bags: https://i.imgur.com/fWyArRH.png

"The SIX will carry up to seven adults and their luggage - in real comfort"

And here's an ad from 1969 with six adults in it (and some rifles. a different time!) https://i.imgur.com/kGMrENf.png

I can't read into the minds of the engineers who made the airplane. Maybe it's true "I don't think they even imagined 6 adults as a typical cabin load". But we can see that the marketing department at least tried to make people think it was.

[lisper]

The useful load of a PA-32 is about 1500 lbs, so yes, you can put 7 180-lb adults in it and still have a little margin. What you cannot do is carry 7 adults plus their bags plus full fuel. Even without bags, you could not go very far with a full plane.

Some planes have more margin: the Cessna 182 for example is a four-seater and can carry full fuel plus 800 lbs, so you really can load it up with four people plus bags and still go somewhere.

But all planes will be close to their operating limits when fully loaded. Even a jetliner will typically be very close to its operating limits on takeoff and pilots have to pay very close attention to this. If you think about it, this has to be the case. If it weren't, the plane would have been over-designed and much more expensive than it has to be, and so it would lose to the competition.