Posted on 12/03/2009 1:46:28 PM PST by thefactor
There's been much debate about how to handle overweight passengers on flights. While some airlines may charge for an extra seat, not all do — and now a flight attendant allegedly snapped a photo on an American Airlines flight (destination and take-off point unknown), which of course has been leaked to the press.
A Flight Global blog got a hold of the photo, which they say the attendant took to "show her manager what was happening on the aircraft and why she was unhappy about it. Seems the guy paid for only one seat and the gate staff let him board."
(Excerpt) Read more at gothamist.com ...
The poor armrest!
This was up earlier too. It went too quickly for me to get in that I checked the actual blog in question. At the time the pic was taken, the flight was still boarding. The man was eventually seated across two seats in the row right behind where he is in the pic.
"I'll post the photo shortly I hope. It's a doozyPhotoshop fake."
I see a capitalist opportunity. Airlines for fat people.. Someone out there has the capital....
I RARELY complain about duplicate posts but this same thing has been posted every day this week. Perhaps its just the different titles so it doesn’t show up on searches.
First time I have seen the article and I am on FR daily.
i searched far and wide. thats the problems with blogs. they are all different titles! but this is an actual publication so i thought i was safe. oopsie.
holy cow
If you think flight attendants have it bad, think about the paramedics who have to get these people to the hospital. And the facilities at the hospital are often not up to the challenge of dealing with the arrival of the patient.
Shouldn’t the airline have the right to take the large customer’s money as well as yours? If you don’t like it shouldn’t *you* be the one to take your money elsewhere?
If the airline does not provide a seat which can accommodate the paid passenger’s size is that the fault of the large person or the airline?
A standard backrest in coach measures 17.5 inches.
According to this picture, this man has a shoulder span of ~35 inches.
So, no matter how fat or thin he is; his shoulders are so wide that no matter what he weighed, he wouldn’t fit in the seat.
Now, being fat is entirely his fault (personal responsibility, folks). However, he has no control over how wide his shoulders are, which is directly a function of his bone structure. That, he cannot help.
The guy next to him has reclined his seat. A real no no for a lot of people in this world and on this forum.
Airlines should charge by total weight, passenger and lugagge. There would be no more dithering and figuring on charges for infants, fat people, extra bags etc. Just you and your bags -302.5 pounds at $x per 100 miles per pound =$xxx.xx. Airlines would then compete on the per pound rate. Total weight and distance are the variables that determine an airlines’ operating costs. The fixed costs would, of course, be figured into that per pound.
the trouble is you can never tell what keywords people will put in their post. don't worry about complaining about duplicate posts. i do it all the time!
yeah i just saw it. see post #17. tough to guess what keywords people put into their posts. oh well.
I have a few friends that are EMTs, and all of them have war stories about our larger brothers and sisters.
It is perfectly alright to post an article that has been posted already. There are over 300,000 registered FReepers who come and go at different times with different interests.
It’s only when there are simultaneous multiple postings of the same article that there is ever a problem. That’s not the case here, I don’t think. If there is another one posted then it proves my point. I saw one this morning but not now and now I have different views to post.
How are you supposed to get by him to go to the can?
No worries. Nothing wrong in posting the same article twice. Have been guilty of this ‘crime’ one too many. :-0)
Either you left of the sarcasm tag or you're not the sharpest pencil in the box.
How are you supposed to get the cocktail cart by him?! Gonna be a lot of thirsty people in coach.
The question isn’t really should the airlines be allowed to take their money. The question is how much of the neighboring seats should somebody occupy before the airline MUST declare the person a two ticket passenger and give them more than one seat.
And when a person is that big, it’s the fault of the person. Of course our current victim mentality prevents us from declaring this guy is just plane fat and needs to pay for the additional space he’ll take.
That’s what happens when Gulliver trys flying on Liliputian airlines. He looks at least 7 ft tall.
He planned to drive but he totalled his car after he couldn’t see out the windshield and wound up hitting a fire hydrant and a tree.
“The poor armrest!”
His poor wife!
It looks real to me. What do you base your comment on.
I don’t know for sure what is going on in this picture. He does indeed seem to be sitting on the armrest. Notice the two empty seats behind him? HMM? The airline attendants could seat him there, if he’s not already sitting there and just talking to the guy next to him.
The premise is still good. Just like overweight lugggage is charged, maybe overweight passengers should be charged. At my size, I’m lucky :-)
This is the only point on which I disagree. It is nobody's business how that person came to be so large in the first place. That is that person's personal business.
Genetics is a tremendous factor in the second place and it has nothing to do with a victim mentality. It is based in large part on what you inherit from *all* of your ancestors, in part on how much you eat, of course, and other factors these days such as certain medicines that cause weight gain and difficulty in losing it. Again, that's not a victim mentality it is just real life which is far from perfect especially where human beings are concerned.
If airlines need to charge based on weight and bulk then they should do so. But to "hate" the large person into not flying or otherwise participating in the public square is just wrong in my book.
OK, defend your position then, smarty. I don't take your word for it... ;0)
as you can see at the front of the pic, there are people still entering the plane. those seats are most likely about to be filled.
Right ...
It’s their personal business all the way up until their girth is impacting other people on shared transportation systems.
If this guy was 20 pounds over weight and wouldn’t fit into the airline seats, that would be the airline’s fault and they should make bigger seats. But when they’re a whole person overweight it’s legitimate to charge the guy extra. But we have this victim mentality in this country right now and whenever an airline starts talking about charging large passengers extra people start throwing around the “discrimination” word.
There’s no “hate”, it’s just a simple reality. There’s no possible way this guy can fit in a single seat designed for anybody of normal dimensions. He’s fat, maybe it’s genetics, maybe it’s too much time at the buffet line, doesn’t matter, he occupies two seats worth of space, and the airline should charge him accordingly without anybody yelling at the airline.
No one to the right of the guy next to him...the crowd still boarding is in the front of the plane, meaning they have boarded from the rear forward...doubt there will be more coming back...no one is staring...the leg is in un unnatural position...doesn’t look real...
I think I sat by that guy one time, he looks familiar.
I wonder what he did when the seatbelt light was on.
I agree. Wasn't that simple? :0)
But the predominant emotion is less flattering and I maintain that *because* you are right that large people cost more to transport and take up more space it is the AIRLINE's responsibility to either charge more or change accomodations so that all their paying customers are satisfied.
Blaming the *airlines* is appropriate, blaming the large passenger is not. But we do things backwards sometimes.
The bigger question — pardon the pun — is that the aisle is blocked. That’s a major safety concern.
That guy should have been forced to buy two seats, one window and one middle, so others can move about the plane safely. Can you imagine an evacuation with him taking up half the aisle?
Of course the flight attendant was concerned enough to take the photo.
Okay, so he is fat. All this is freakin’ crap to get you all ramped up against fat folks.
We are so done. Just like a overcooked steak.
Tough, dry and unedible.
I didn’t pay for this guys ticket, so I do not care.
But it’s not that simple. Because there’s way too many people, with lawyers, that want to yell discrimination. This guy got charged to 1 seat, yet clearly is not capable of sitting in only 1 seat. But if they charged him for 2, or said they didn’t have the extra room, they get problems like Southwest had (linked to in the story).
The airline’s aren’t doing anything wrong, they CAN’T charge the fat guy extra, they’ll get sued or at least get a ton of bad press (again look at what happened to Southwest). And since you made it an either/or question that leaves only the fat guy to blame. If you want to break it out of the either/or we can look at a society that’s so addicted to victim status that airlines fear to say “you’re too fat for one seat, pay for two”.
Bingo. however, the so called “conservatives” on here are going to flame you.
Oh horse crap. They got the cart by this guy or all of the people would be bitch*ng.
They just want you to hate him, and they must be succeeding.
I just hate this fat guy! /sarc
Looks real to me. A lot of airlines stage their boarders, letting those with seats at the back of the plain board first, then the middle and then the front.
The story explains that it was taken during the boarding process and another Freeper said the guy eventually was seated in the TWO seats on the row behind where is waiting during the photo.
This guy is just nasty nasty overweight and should have bought two tickets instead of scumming off everyone elses fares.
Nothing looks “photoshopped” in anyway about this phot IMHO.
The size of the seat is part of the purchase price. If you are spreading out beyond the space you have purchased it’s rude, disrespectful andjust plain liberal to expect others to just “surrender” the space that they have paid for.
No they didn’t. When you or someone else bought the ticket, they did not tell you, nor did you know. a big hefty fat guy was getting on the plane.
After this day, I am really dissappointed at conservatives. This is not about freedom, but who gets to run the tyranny.
Shame on all of us.
OK...but no one authenticates it, the people around him aren’t staring (and you KNOW that they would be) and the leg is a solid shadow...in opinion, it’s a fake...and I promise this is true...I have flown just under a million miles DOMESTICALLY with AA...this wouldn’t happen.
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