Why don't fat people have to pay for their extra weight when traveling by plane?

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Miss Leona

OK, imagine your a larger lady and your about to get on a flight with a big queue behind you and the girl at the check in say please stand on the scales we need to see how heavy you are to charge you extra by the pound, how would you feel, very f**kin embarrassed and pissed off, and what would you do when you got home.
Hello yellow pages yes hi could i have the number of a solicitor please

Lee Lee

How about people with huge ego's Julia, surely they should have to pay more to get those on the plane shouldn't they JULIA!!

Blue M

and ur black

Mr Rosenkrantz

Perhaps they should also ban ignorant bigots who repeatedly demonstrate to everyone they are incapable of using the English language correctly?

mr danger

First of all heavy and fat are not synonyms.
Second of all when you're quasi-legally occupying that exit row and that airplane goes splat you may thank God that the 6'2 " 250 lb muscular guy that is sitting next to you can easily handle that 62 lb emergency door that you couldn't lift if your life depended on it ....and it does

93gregsonl

it's called being rude.

hiba

They do if they require 2 seats.

averagebear

A 6ft thin guy would weigh more than a 5ft fat gal. But the 6ft guy is normal!

A L

What an interesting question! That is a good point! I don't think you're rude to ponder such a thing. It actually makes a lot of sense. But here's why airlines don't charge people for being heavy:

1) Usually, if you're an extra large person, you have to either buy an extra seat or buy a first class ticket (the seats are usually bigger in first class).

2) It will turn away customers. The reason for this is because if weigh one person, you would have to weight EVERY person. You couldn't just say "Yeah, you look large. Step on the scale please". You would have to weight everyone even the skinniest person and the smallest child. And most people don't feel comfortable being weighed publicly by strangers even if they have an appropriate weight.

3) There would have to be a way to decide if you are "extra large". If you do it by the definition of obesity, you might be charging a whole lot extra for a five year old kid who might be overweight for his height, but weighs a little compared to his adult counterparts. If you do it by every pound over... let's say 250... then tall/muscular people who are healthy and not "extra large" would be paying a large fee for no reason.

Let's just say this: the airlines would loose a lot more money by charging extra for heavy people than they are right now for not.

Joseph

That is about to change

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/09/should-thinner-people-fly-cheaper/

chrissaltmarshafc

maybe you should not go on planes if you feel this way

mrs w

hmmm ur not a nice person then

Melissa

haha! Well, they can't because it wouldn't be seen as "politically correct".

Skeptical Bob

There should be a metal "body gauge" like the luggage gauge outside the bag check in some airports. Picture it: a big outline of a person, with the words "Your waist must fit through these bars to ride coach." If they don't fit, they have to buy a first class ticket.

Funnyman 18

lol i bet you are fat!!

ice cream lover

i think it's because they go by total weight of the plane and its passengers
and if you did pay by weight, everyone would go anorexic!

ckbtvl

ACLU

Bas and Sarah

I think there's a good point here. Everyone can go crazy, but it is still true that some people who don't look after their weight take much more space than others who do have a healthy lifestyle. I think it's not far that I have a bad flight because someone next to me is too big to stay in his or her seat.

I think there are a lot of overweight people complaining here.. I am 6 feet 4 and i weigh like 190 pounds, so I'm pretty heavy for European standards, but I would be in favor of just deciding a weight, take off the person's weight, and then allow the person to take as luggage what is left.

aliikaii

LOL. We used to have to pay depending on our weight down in the South Pacific. We'd step on a mechanical red scale, and pay extra if we were over a certain weight. Then again, the runways were also long grass fields, and the planes were tiny, usually with as many roped up pigs and chickens in the passenger area as people.

militismagnae

health and Life Insurance companies are allowed to adjust premiums based on hieght/weight proportion... Auto and home insurance is allowed to adjust premiums based on geographic location...

It's considered a reasonable means of adjusting prices to reflect marginal costs. I don't see how it would be unreasonable to allow airlines to do something similar.

I could imaginan plenty of ways a discrete, non-intrusive means of factoring weight into a price. Just as excessivelly sized people would be charged more than average, undersized people could be charged less than average.

Seems fair to me--and I'm a big boy!

josha

i think if they are really fat they have to pay for two seats

pegasusfc

human rights? the airline may not want to lose customers by calling them fat :)

..::Leila::..

Were you dropped on the head as a baby?

wozza.lad

The way your going on i bet you use more air than anybody else ,should you pay extra for that.
Also should people with anorexia pay less.

Bean

Pretty mean. Some people do have to pay for two spots on an airplane I've heard.

cubalishus

Why do ignorant people like you ask such pathetic questions.

*Fatty*

Hey, you seem like the person who would laugh at this.

My friends mom is HUGE!! and she just took a flight. She was so big she couldn't get her seatbelt on so she just said 'screw it, they can't tell me what to do' and didn't put it on. The plane was preparing to take off, like driving fast and everything and then the pilot slowed down and stopped!! the plane because he saw that someone wasn't wearing their seatbelt! HA! they had to giver her an extention! lmfao! - i felt bad, but again.. it is still funny :) - i don't believe she had to buy an extra seat though, so that must have been a tight squeeze, if ya know what I mean ;)

anyway, i was totally wondering the exact thing the other day. hardly seems fair that my luggage got stuck in Calgary for 18 hours because Mr. Elastic Waistband couldn't control himself from eat his thousanth cheeseburger..!! and we paid the same price - fuc*!! lol

xx

Windinherhair

I don't know...have mixed feelings on this one.
I wouldn't want to be discriminatory or hurt people's feelings. On the other hand, if the airlines were to charge by weight, perhaps it should be a combined allowance of a person's body weight and luggage??

CyH

Because that would be discriminatry.

Jim808

It wouldn't be politically correct, do you ever notice how the plane leans over to the one side when taking off, this is because you can't ask people their weight when booking tickets.

Sam

Thats a good point...why dont they give you an amount to take including yourself then they weigh you and your bags when you check in. Obviously theyd have to give you a decent amount so as to not descriminate against too many people.

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