Larger airline customers

Please use your best judgment before posting in this thread. This is not about bashing fat people.

If a person is too large for an airline seat, should they have to buy two tickets?

I ask this for the following reason: Nobody should have to put up with someone else entering their personal space, space they have rented for the duration of the flight. Airlines have three options: 1) Do nothing. 2) Make larger seats (either specific ones for overweight passengers or just in general) or allow overweight passengers to take up two seats (and therefore not selling the extra seat). 3) Charge the overweight passenger for an extra seat.

I am personally in favor of option 3.

Option 1 pushes the problem onto somebody who has done nothing wrong and has paid for the exclusive right to use that space. They are then left to deal with the discomfort.

Option 2 pushes the problem to everybody, whether they have done anything wrong or not. Making larger seats or allowing overweight passengers to use up two seats without paying for them means that the extra cost will be transferred to customers. If a plane has 100 seats and each ticket costs $1,000, then for them to make the same profit when they only have 80 seats to sell requires them to sell tickets at $1,250. Regardless of whether or not I personally am overweight, I have to pay $250 more for my ticket.

Option 3 requires that the person *most likely* responsible for the problem to pay extra. NOT ALL OVERWEIGHT PEOPLE ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THEIR CONDITION. However, the overwhelming majority have made poor lifestyle choices that put them in that situation.

Does anybody have an option 4? Or a different reading of the options I've put above? Just wanting to know people's opinions.

[unacceptable fat people bashing cut]

Seriously though, I think option 3 is valid. When you're buying an airplane ticket/seat, you're paying for a certain amount of space. Some people take up more space, so it makes sense (to me, at least) to have them pay more for the extra space they require.

It's simple, really. They take up two seats. One of those seats could have had a second paying customer in it. Either stump up for both, or walk.

How do you even get 'two-seat' fat, anyway? I mean, that's not 'overweight', that's 'monstrous'. My family are predisposed toward being overweight, but with a sensible diet and exercise it is avoidable.

edited 22nd Jan '12 11:15:48 AM by InverurieJones

Option 2: Make bigger seats.

Airline seats have been getting smaller and smaller over the years in an attempt to cram more people onto the plane. Fat people, people with broad shoulders, tall people, etc, are all now uncomfortably cramped in planes for hours and hours on end.

That's a study from the 1950s, and many airline seats are even smaller than that.

Also, first class seating is usually larger than economy. If the fat person can't fit in an economy seat, having them pay some extra to get to first class rather than charing them for two whole seats that they're not going to use all of is probably a better idea. If this requires bumping someone down from first class, compensate them extra than the difference.

everyone's happy.

edited 22nd Jan '12 11:41:28 AM by ohsointocats

I don't like the idea of bumping someone down. Have the overweight person buy first-class in the first place if they don't want to pay for two seats.

Why not? People get bumped off of entire flights all the time. It's also better than bumping someone off a completely packed flight because a fat person needs two seats.

Also, typically people who "need" two seats are not two-seat big, but merely greater than one seat big. There's a huge (no pun intended) difference. There are actually so many discriminatory things and horrible capitalist things going on with this that I do not know where to start.

edited 22nd Jan '12 11:32:20 AM by ohsointocats

Option 2: Make bigger seats: The seats are too damn small!

You don't have to be morbidly obese for needing an economy seat and a half.: It's naturally large people too. If you're 6'5'', muscular and on the broad-shouldered side of things, you barely fit in one of those damn things (through no fault of your own). Some people are fat through no fault of their own (certain conditions fatten). In short, If you design seats for skinny 6' people, whole lotsa folks won't fit in at all, not just the obese.

Anyway, it strikes me as one of these let undesirables pay extra (like sin taxes) bandwagons almost the whole forum jumps in: It's sheer pettiness.

edited 22nd Jan '12 11:55:08 AM by SavageHeathen

I agree with option 4 2. The last time I didn't have to twist my legs in weird angles in an airplane was in 1998, and I was so much smaller then, what with childhood. Seriously, I don't get the point - airplanes currently package their customers in about the same way public bus transportation does.

edited 22nd Jan '12 11:45:05 AM by SilentReverence

It's discriminatory towards women because women carry more fat around the waist and hips and would have more trouble sitting in a very small seat like they do on airlines. However many men have broad shoulders and slimmer hips and can physically sit in the seat but are jabbing fellow passengers with their shoulders and they're not being charged for an extra seat.

Whenever there's an extra seat next to people on a flight, it always fills up with purses and coats, and they're not paying to use that extra seat at all! If fat people who spill onto the next seat when there's nobody sitting in it get charged extra, these people should be charged extra too. Anyone with an extra seat in their row should be charged extra, in this case, for the added comfort it provides.

And my God I'm agreeing with Savage Heathen. It must be a sign of the apocalypse.

edited 22nd Jan '12 11:52:44 AM by ohsointocats

2: Make the seats bigger anyway. Seriously, even for average people those things are tiny.

3: I'm fine with paying for two seats, provided that's the only option. At our local airport those planes normally have empty seats anyway, so fuck paying for two when there's like 15 seats open but if it was full up? Yeah I can see buying two.

4: I don't see why having 2/4 seats for overweight people would be a big deal. Make them cost slightly more with a priority for fat people. If no one who requires a fat-person seat shows up then most likely someone else will take em just for the extra room.

I guess the problem is that at my local airport most planes do not have any seats open. Everyone is packed like sardines and I have only been on one flight in the past ten years or so that was not completely full, and I go on a lot of flights.

Make bigger seats. My BMI (not the best measure but still a workable one) has me at underweight for my height, yet at 6'3" with a broad frame, I've been on a lot of planes where I have difficulty comfortably sitting in coach seats.

The problem with letting airlines charge the bigger-butted passengers double is that the airlines are also the ones setting the dimensions for the seats. It would incentivize them to shrink the seats further so that a greater proportion of people are charged double. I'm sure they would love a scenario where they could collect 150 fares while only carrying 100 people.

I'm agreeing with make the seats bigger. Once they can fit the average normal-weight person, then you can charge people for two seats if they need it.

I mean, hell, the current seating is barely wide enough to fit Drunkscriblerian, and he's borderline underweight.

Okay, let me (try to) direct the conversation away from "airline seats are too small for the rest of us." I heartily agree, but our pocketbooks don't, and that's why airlines do not make bigger seats in economy. We aren't fixing that without paying more for our seats.

But assuming we had seats appropriate for a normal-sized individual and a larger person spilled over into someone else's seat, what should airlines do?

For those jumping on option 2, do you have any reason why *everyone* should have to pay extra for their tickets?

Edit @ohsointocats: I have no problem with having larger people pay for first-class tickets instead of having to buy two seats. I do have a problem with bumping someone else, but I don't see why that would be necessary. You either have a first-class ticket or not. When the plane runs out of first class seats, they stop selling first class tickets.

edited 22nd Jan '12 1:11:45 PM by Vericrat

Perhaps because current airline seating is uncomfortable for everyone, and the airlines are now just looking to scapegoat fat people?

Also the reasoning for switching people around is that it's impossible for someone to tell if they're going to be forced to pay for an extra ticket or not. Someone who has been flying on an airline for years may suddenly be told that they need to purchase another ticket even when they haven't gotten any fatter. Allowing seats to be switched around allows everyone to stay on their flight on flights that are completely full, like most of the ones going out of the airports I fly from. If there are available first-class seats but no economy seats, then by all means just charge them extra to go to first class. If there are extra economy seats, let them sit next to that extra economy seat without charging — they probably won't take up the entire seat, and the person next to them would probably appreciate the extra space to put their purse or bag mid-flight. If the plane is completely full, that's the only time when you would have to switch people around.

edited 22nd Jan '12 1:20:28 PM by ohsointocats

Humans are relatively low density, so the limiter is more volumetric than (human) mass. The more humans you can cram into your transport device, the higher your trip fuel efficiency per person is.

I doubt that hundreds of thousands of planes will be discarded or refurbished. They could introduce new sizes on new planes, and you would have your discounted option of feeling like a sardine on an older model.

edited 22nd Jan '12 11:33:08 PM by Gwirion

You wouldn't actually have to do anything with the planes themselves. The little fiddly bits on the inside aren't connected to the frames. You'd just to have to tear out the aesthetic parts with all the seats.

Hence, refurbished. It would still cost a shitload of money.

edited 23rd Jan '12 12:08:09 AM by Gwirion

The fuel cost would probably outweigh the refurbishment cost.

It wouldn't, because the planes would be losing money by making the seats larger.

They would both be loses, the fuel cost would, in my opinion as such, to be a larger loss since it is one that would stack up over time compared to the one time refurbishment.

I'm not huge, but I'm not tiny either, and I fit comfortably enough in an airline economy class seat... Sure, I don't have total freedom of mobility to lean back and stretch out, but I don't feel squished. Then again I'm used to nut-to-butt C-130 rides, so regular airliners aren't so bad.

I say charge people for the extra seat, the airlines shouldn't be forced to make bigger seats, and they shouldn't have to give up an extra paid space just because someone fat wanted to fly.

If you want to be comfortable, buy first class, if you want to get somewhere faster than driving, get used to coach.

edited 23rd Jan '12 12:40:15 AM by Barkey

Look, airlines are going to maximize their pocketbooks. Some people are going to look at seat sizes and say, "No fucking way, I'm driving." And they lose that customer. Some, on the other hand, would look at the increased ticket price of planes with slightly larger seats and say, "No fucking way, I'm driving." They all aim for the sweet spot that's right in the middle, and apparently our pocketbooks (for the most part) matter more to us than our comfort.

Now, that being said, once you have rented a seat, it should be yours for the duration. Other people should not be able to intrude without your permission.