I’ve always been in favor of overweight people having to buy two seats. It’s not a pleasant flight next to someone who’s 400 lbs squeezed into coach.
Guess I picked the wrong week to stop binge eating! /airplane
Hmmmm.... I think this would be difficult to get passed.
A woman 5’ 3” 130 lbs, 1x 40 lbs bag
A man 6’ 3” 250 lbs, 1x 40 lbs bag
The man is going to be additionally dinged (120 lbs x distace) just due to he being born genetically tall and muscled?
Maybe if they set an upper max limit, and beyond that additional fee. Say, beyond 300 lbs total? 350???
I just see it as being headache material for the airlines and a bevy of lawsuits. (We Americans, we love our lawsuits.)
As long as my two kids get me a significant discount, no problem. Both of them combined don’t weigh half of what an average adult female weighs, much less a male. Should just about round us back to even.
So, men will pay more than women? Asians (generally smaller) will pay less than blacks (generally larger)?
This policy is ripe for multiple lawsuits.
This doesn't bode well for us tall folks who tend to out-weigh shorter folks without being obese. For me, I'd rather they charge by the cubic foot. That way, I could pay a little more and get some actual hip room and leg room.
is that before or after you get on a plane?? If you fly business class, it really should be called “gorging” class.
Interesting that this article on overweight is separated from the UN complaint about fat Americans by only one other article.
Something like this is always politically motivated.
Politics = Wickedness in High Places
Being a small woman, this works in my favor. Unfortunately, I’ll have to stop feeding my 12 and 15 year old sons and husband . . .
For an example I’ll use the fairly popular 737-400. According to http://portal.aircraft-info.net/article20.html the maximum seat configuration is 188 seats The empty weight of the aircraft is 76,200 lb and max weight (presumably with people, luggage, and full fuel tanks) is 138,500 lb.
Assuming a plane full of adults at the maximum 188 seat configuration, and an average weight of 210lb per person (170 for the adult human, 40 for luggage), the people weight is 39,480 lbs. Passenger and luggage weight is only about 29% of total loaded plane weight.
Is it really practical to spend all that time checking and weighing in and performing transactions to extract the premium for a few people who are overweight?
I have hundreds of thousands of frequent flier miles stored up and I avoid using them because air travel and the airline are so terrible already. The airline industry is digging a deeper hole as time goes on.
If anybody thinks that they’ll get women to step on a scale at the airport, they’re dreaming.
That will appeal to the female market segment - getting weighed during the most stressful environment in modern history - at the end of a checkin line at the airport.
“What do you mean I weigh 121 lbs!! That scale is BROKEN!”
This makes perfect sense to me.
UPS and FedEx tend to treat my packages better than the airlines treat my luggage. Why not use the UPS/FedEx model and charge per pound per mile (you and everything you wear or carry), with a minimum price per package (passenger)?
Charge more for extra services, such as an “oversized box” for wide or tall people.
Raise the price per pound per mile as needed to make a profit; lower the price as needed to stay competitive.
"Excuse me... I'm in seat 7-B"
My wife cannot weigh much more than half of what I do, maybe not even half.
Can we take an average?