The Anonymous Widower

Charging Airline Passengers According To Their Weight

As someone built like the Aldgate Sphinx, I’m all in favour of this action by Samoa  Air. It’s reported here in the Guardian.

A Samoan airline that has become the world’s first carrier to charge passengers according to their weight has defended its policy. People wishing to travel withSamoa Air have to submit their weight, including their luggage, when booking to calculate their fare.

They describe it as the concept of the future.

I think that it has some advantages.  I remember getting on an EasyJet flight and an enormously obese man was in the queue. Everybody wanted to avoid sitting next to him and being swamped as all that fat overflowed into their seat. In the end everybody’s fears were unfounded as a stewardess squeezed him into two seats and made a big show of getting the seat belt extension  much to all the passengers’ delight. What would have happened if the flight had been full, I don’t know, as the window seat, which was unoccupied, would have had to have been used! They would have been trapped there for the duration of the flight!

So weighing passengers would in this case have charged him for the seats he actually occupied.

There is always the story about the charter pilot, who during the week, flew jockeys to the races.  At the weekend, he took a party  of four somewhat larger passengers to somewhere exotic and realised that he was overweight for the aircraft and had to unload some of the fuel.

Charging for passengers by weight may not happen now, but say if you were flying from London to Budapest, which I am on Monday, where there is a choice of three reputable airlines and one airline charged by weight, small and normal sized passengers would probably find it was an advantage to choose the pay-by-weight airline, as they wouldn’t then be sitting next to some enormous lump of solid lard. So to charge by weight, might attract more passengers.

On a serious note, have any studies been done on evacuating an aircraft in an emergency, where there are some seriously overweight passengers? Some I’ve seen wouldn’t be able to get through the emergency exits.

There’s also some interesting comments on obese flyers here in the Economist.

I think that this issue will be solved when Michael O’Leary of Ryanair decides on a controversial policy. Love him or loathe him, he usually makes the right decisio, for both his airline and most of their passengers.

April 3, 2013 - Posted by AnonW | Transport/Travel | Flying, Obesity