'The bigger you are the higher the cost of a plane ticket' AIBU to think that this is ridiculous?

[Poppet48]

I have just heard the debate of should a plane ticket cost more for obese people.

I think that this is ridiculous, not only is it discriminating it is highly embarrassing to have to get weighed at the airport check in, Where have the human rights gone?

AIBU to feel this way?

I would love to hear what others think of this.

My mum is very heavy, would spill into the next seat on a plane heavy, she doesn't fly because of it, it would be too uncomfortable for her.

As an aside, she also have diabetes, I don't know for sure, but I think because of her weight. She got very heavy then developed it. Now, my mum always says that she eats hardly anything and that her weight is because of her medication. IMO this just doesn't seem to be true. If we go out for lunch, she is always the only one (apart from the children) who orders pudding, with the comment that 'she never has pudding so will today'. If we're at home she always has second helpings (and pudding) , with the same comment. I don't know how she eats at home alone, she says she eats salads every day, and only has one meal. She always seems to have plenty of other food and ice-cream etc in though. She does say that she eats a lot of chocolate in front of the telly in the evening though.

In my mums case, it seems to me that she just eats too much and this is why she's heavy, while sincerely believing she eats very little. Maybe because of this I am always a bit sceptical when people say they are heavy because of a disability, although I'm sure they believe this is the reason. Maybe it is, what do I know about it.

Didnt some analysis come out last year that people underestimate how much they are eating on a weekly basis by 40%. Tbh - I can see why. Its so easy to forget the two biscuits you had and yes, Ken sadly I think there are a lot of people like your Mum who are really only fooling themselves into what they arent eating. Everyone else knows it is because they are eating too much...

I wonder how we should deal with people flying overseas to have bariatric surgery.

Cleo - is this the gastric band surgery? If so - two seats.....

Cleo this would be dealt with the same way as any other passenger of size...with either two purchased seats or with a purchased first class seat.

MaisieJoe- Horry's husband would have done the same thing in an emergency that I have seen passengers do in non emergencies while seated next to a very big person. Climb over them.

Russians Thank you for liking my usernane, your the first to comment on it. For the record I am not bashing the skiny people, just saying that not all fat people are pigs, most are really nice people with lots of issues, dilemas and challenges, itsjust that their problems spills on their physical side while for others its the reverse and others a different ... maybe they add emotional bagage. What I am saying is that its not fair to penalise them in some way coz pretty soon we wil have to ask people if they will be checking in their emotional baggage as well as their tangable bagage.

Honey -lovely vision...

I guess we are back to the 'why shouldnt a grossly overweight person have access to all the cheap airlines and have to consider buying two tickets'.

Well - because they are effectively taking up two seats.

I havent gone grey yet, when I do I will pay a salon to colour it. It will cost loads and maybe I should complain that its not fair that others dont have this cost but I have a choice. I can go grey.

If you are unable to fit into one seat and end up sharing someone else's you also have a choice, lose weight or buy another seat. You cannot have it both ways.

Mondrian I love Mondrian's paintings! Thanks for the clarification, I think you are right, to be honest. I haven't advocated differential pricing on airlines based on size and I can't see that I ever would. I think policies of moving people when there is space are a good idea though.

If we have to pay by weight a naturally very petite person will pay a lot less than an equally fit and healthy naturally very tall, broad shouldered person, even if both have the same BMI and neither spill over into the next seat.

That is logical in relation to fuel costs but "unfair" in that neither can do anything about their size... If you are 6 ft 6 you are going to weigh a lot more than your neighbour who is 5 ft 0, even though you are both responsible, healthy living types. Could it even be illegal as it would really be discrimination on the basis of genetics...

When I was a flight attendant I could care less how much someone weighed, how tall they were, did they get heavy because of a disability or because they ate too many pies. What I cared about was if a passenger was so large they couldn't safely occupy one seat. On a flight with empty seats not so much of a problem- move people around and get them two seats. On an oversold flight however it was a different matter. The large person would have to get off and get rebooked on another flight because they simply couldn't fit into just one seat. I got absolutely no pleasure out of having to ask someone to get off the plane, but there wasn't another option.

I remember working a flight were we couldn't do beverage service, because a passenger of size was spilling out of his seat and into the ailse so we couldn't get the beverage cart down the ailse. The girl sitting next to him ended up spending most of the flight standing in the aft gally because there simply wasn't enough room for her next to him. This meant that she was jepardizing her safety and the flight attendant's safety if we hit bad turbulence.

Another time we had a lady who was so big she couldn't fit the seatbelt around her even with a setbelt extension, and she was pressed up against the seat in front of her. She had to get off the plane and take a bus I believe. The captain pointed out to me that if she had had a medical emergency such as a heart attack (more common than you think on a plane) we wouldn't have been able to help her...I mean how could we even get to her to use the defibrillator?

"Could it even be illegal as it would really be discrimination on the basis of genetics..."

Clothes for older kids (slightly larger) are often a bit more expensive than the same models in younger kids (slightly smaller) so there is precedent.

Who here wouldn't like to pay much less for DC on planes?

honey thats shocking, I would be trully shamed if I was the larger person.

do they not realise the safety concerns the rest if us have.

SoupDreggan, it is a fat bashing thread. The thread may be ostensibly about overspill, which is no doubt a genuine issue, but a lot of the comments nevertheless amount to judgmental fat bashing. Threads involving size always descend into fat bashing, the same way anything about childcare descends into a SAHM/WOHM row.

YABU what about my rights of having to sit next to an obese person who is spilling over into my chair, thats hardly fair!

Would it be so hard to put in the small prin of the ticket: this seat is sold on the basis that the passenger can fit within the confines of the seat with both armrest s down. If the cabin crew judge that this os not the case, you will be charged for an additional seat. In the event of no seat being available you will be removed from the flight and placed on the next available flight with free capacity.'

People still seem to be missing the point of the original post. The suggestions that have been put forward by the professor have NOTHING to do with paying for an extra seat and therefore giving everyone more room. They are simply suggesting that if you weigh more, you pay more. Everything to do with fuel consumption and nothing to do with comfort or safety.

Ironically I heard about an obese person who DID book and pay for an extra seat for comfort. Then on check in found that the airline had allocated the two seats in different parts of the plane!! AND they wouldn't refund him the extra seat!

LetMe - It is normal for passengers to have such delusions, do you remember when airlines banned smoking on flights? Well it wasn't due to their concern for health of passengers but because of the cost of cleaning the Air-conditioning - the tar would clog up the system if not routinely cleaned up, in actual fact it was the single most expensive labour item in maintenance, they saved a fortune on that. Weight is the same, fuel consumption is totally dependent on total weight of AC and its a double whammy .... Higher weight of passengers = extra fuel so now the aircraft is even heavier due to extra fuel and needs even more fuel to carry the extra fuel.

However the airlines will not have any interest in saving 200kg by penalising a handful of obese passengers and all the negative publicity that entails ... They would only get on the band wagon if it was a mass cull, affecting a decent chunk of passengers and that will be very complex to design & implement.

Furthermore there is no definition for standard passenger size, or even standard airline seat. You may have noticed that you have a little less room in budget airlines and a little more on long haul BA.

Well I never knew that about no smoking, Mondrian. Ever day's a school day

To be honest, I am just finding some responses on this thread annoying because people keep banging on about paying for two seats and that was never the 'recommendation' in the first place. Some sensible answers and comments but others are just, IMO, a bit over the top.

*every day, not ever day!

Airlines have two choices when responding to the increasing weight of the population and the consequent additional fuel costs. They can either charge everyone more or they can introduce differential pricing. I expect they will do whichever affects their operating margins less. Likely most people will pay more.

The issue of seriously obese people not being able to fit into a single seat is related but different, and I think the American airlines have the right approach (although they have almost certainly adopted it because of fear of litigation from people suffering injuries as a result of being squashed).

Here are American Airline's rules

and South West's

Neither seem particularly unreasonable to me, but there is no doubt this is a real problem.

Nice take on the issues Nooka ... Come to think of it airlines are already addressing the increasing weight issue, over the past 20 years luggage allowances have certainly shrank and they are certainly much more strict on hand luggage.

SoupDreggan, it is a fat bashing thread.

I disagree but you are entitled to your opinion.

I don't care what the reasons are, be they huge rugby player or obesity. I don't want someone else sitting in half of the seat I have paid for. If you need more than one seat you need to pay for it.

I am less convinced about charging for weight alone but definitely size needs to be addressed where it impacts negatively on another passenger.

People still seem to be missing the point of the original post

I think the discussion has just evolved in a slightly different direction.