Fat people on planes

mattyj1085 said:
Just feel like having a moan about something tonight

I dont think its fair that there is a luggage allowance of a certain weight and people get charged for every kilo over this weight, yet someone who is 25stone doesnt get charged when they take up half of someones seat.

Surely they should have to pay for 2 seats on the plane or the luggage / hand luggage allowance should be increased to match the combined weight of the heaviest person plus their baggage.

I have been on a few plane journeys when ive been seated next to someone who is overflowing onto my seat. I wouldnt be allowed to plonk another bag next to me, half spilling onto someones seat, aswell as my hand luggage and luggage so why should they?
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I agree, I should pay much less for a seat OR be able to carry 50 kg's of baggage instead of the standard 25 kg's, I only weigh 48 kg's after all ( 105.6 lbs) and the average male person weighs 80, a fat guy is at least double my weight if not triple) , it's unfair some fat guy that is much heavier on the plane ( causes a bigger fuel usage) has to pay as much as me.


mattyj1085 said:
no, this would mean stupid increases of fuel and therefore ticket costs.

Simply get the passenger to stand on the scales with their luggage, if the weight is over say 128 kilos then charge £10 for every kilo over

17 stone (108 kilos) plus 20 kilos baggage

- meaning fatties who weight 27 stone have to pay a £60 excess. This will be used to pay for fuel or anything else
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128 kilos? That'd be great, I'd be able to take 80 kilos of luggage :D. No more going on holidays without my gaming rig & an extra big tv for if the hotel has some kind of lame small non HD tv:D.
 
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i was sure that people who are big enough must buy 2 seats.

thats the only logical policy, to measure each person and have a physicist to calculate their cost would be stupid..

if you cant fit in the seat nicely = buy 2. and stretch.
 
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They should just have a weight for each person then.. EG you pay for a ticket. Which accounts for say... 125 kilos on the plane.

So if you weigh 100 kilos, you get 25 for baggage.

Etc ;)
 
In the last few years I have travelled a fair bit as I have now emigrated to Singapore, travel around Asia for leisure (cultural tours / beaches with my family, not the other sort of leisure SEA esp. Bangkok is known for) and the odd trip back to the UK to see the family.

I tend to try and fly prem econ especially on the long haul flights. Being 6ft 1" (I feel for you taller guys), the leg room is just about acceptable although the foot rest on the 747's tend to dig in to my shins.

Should people of larger size pay extra, yep IMO. You are paying for a seat of a predetermined size in an airplane and for a set average weight allowance. If you do not fit that seat then you need to pay extra for a larger amount of space to fit your frame. Does it matter if it is your fault of not (i.e. big boned or fat or muscular) ?. No it makes no difference. The fact is that if you weigh more then it costs more to transport you and why should everyone else have to pay. Don't care if it is your fault you are that big. Your size / weight so your responsibility to pay for it if you wish to travel.

Is this realistic. Nope, will never happen apart from in the most extreme cases. Just like smaller people being able to take more luggage as their body size / weight does not reach the set 'normal' parameters. Size in airports is a premium commodity. Who is going to pay for the area required to weigh a person and their baggage. Where should these areas be located. It will have to be before the check in counters. How is it going to affect the queues which people already complain about very loudly.

What with 4 in the family now, travelling back to the UK is very expensive in economy let alone higher classes (ok so the baby flies free but there are limited seats with space to accommodate a baby and they get booked early by tall or fat people ). Luckily my 9 y/o and wife are both pretty slim so we just block out 3 seats and I sit in the one next to the isle and hope the stewardesses don't take a dislike to me and keep crashing the trolley in to my legs.

The show quoted with the example of the obese person having to buy two seats was IIRC 'Airport' and Term 4 at Heathrow which, I believe, used to be BA only jumps to mind. It is interesting that a person can book two seats for themselves but if a party of people have one not be able to travel on the day you forfeit the seat without any refund and the airline can resell it :mad:.

First class is the way to go (not worth it for short haul) which I have done twice now between the UK and Singapore but at 6+ times the cost it is not a realistic option for most people (including myself now).

RB
 
maybe airlines should start providing "fat people" seats

slighty wider with built in odour eaters, oh and a king sized tray so they can get a bigger meal :)
 
True story:

I flew to Canada last year with Thomson. It was the first time I'd flown with them and I'd done this same trip about 10 times before with other airlines.

I was charged £58 for being 3kg over the baggage limit of 20kg. Most airlines I flown with in the past, with a baggage allowance of 20kg, won't bat an eyelid at anything below 25kg, but oh no - this time I was ordered to pay. So I go to desk to pay the fine and there's about 10 other mugs lined-up, all fuming because they were only several kgs over the limit.

So when it comes my turn to pay, I say to the staff - "Excuse me, but if you're penalising people for a few extra kilos of baggage, why aren't you charging fat people extra?". According to them, my question was 'discriminatory' and 'ridiculous'.

I'll never fly Thomson again.
 
You should be paying for a ticket, which takes into account the average weight of a passenger and baggage allowance (maybe weight and number limits for baggage). Anything above gets charged extra. So if you're fat, then take less luggage, or pay more for the extra fuel used to transport YOU. This is not discriminatory, after all, if your bags are overweight, they give the spiel about using more fuel to carry it. So the argument works both ways. It suddenly doesnt become untruth just because it applies to a person.

Not too difficult to set up in reality. Just have a weight mat in front of the check in desk. You'll be weighed together with your luggage, weight only known to check in staff.
 
frosty03 said:
You should be paying for a ticket, which takes into account the average weight of a passenger and baggage allowance (maybe weight and number limits for baggage). Anything above gets charged extra. So if you're fat, then take less luggage, or pay more for the extra fuel used to transport YOU. This is not discriminatory, after all, if your bags are overweight, they give the spiel about using more fuel to carry it. So the argument works both ways. It suddenly doesnt become untruth just because it applies to a person.

Not too difficult to set up in reality. Just have a weight mat in front of the check in desk. You'll be weighed together with your luggage, weight only known to check in staff.
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Thats certainly an idea. I do think that a "ticket" will end up being for a certain weight allowance. In the same way you have to buy so many tickets per ride at blackpool pleasure beach for example.
 
yes, airlines personally humiliating their customers who weigh more will REALLY get them more business.

Honestly, some people need to think about what their saying before they do so...

Some people are fat, aside from some very complex economics and the odd time you have to sit next to them, they don't effect you (unlike smokers), tbh get over it.

Feel smug that your more attractive to the opposite sex, fitter than they are and don't get out of breath when you climb stairs etc if you want and just move on...
 
manic_man said:
yes, airlines personally humiliating their customers who weigh more will REALLY get them more business.

Honestly, some people need to think about what their saying before they do so...

Some people are fat, aside from some very complex economics and the odd time you have to sit next to them, they don't effect you (unlike smokers), tbh get over it.

Feel smug that your more attractive to the opposite sex, fitter than they are and don't get out of breath when you climb stairs etc if you want and just move on...
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Its not a case of humiliating some customers, it's a case of being fare to everyone. If I had to sit next to a fat person and they were intruding on my personal space I'd make sure the airline provided me with another seat. The space on a plane is limited enough anyway without having some obese person spilling his/her gut into your lap on a long haul flight. It's just unacceptable. Any persons I know who are over weight to the point of not fitting in the seats properly has to common decency to buy a first class/business class ticket. It's their problem, not the airlines or other customers.

And why bring smokers into the equation, you haven't been able to smoke on airlines for sometime now, and now you can't smoke in any public place. There's is no situation where you're forced to put up with other peoples smoke, and it certain won’t cost you any money. Tbh honest using smokers to mitigate stuffing your face with junk food to the point of inconveniencing others members of the public is ridiculous
 
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Depends also upon the Plane with regard to seat sizes and legroom. I regularly fly back and too to Barcelona with Easyjet when they had the old 737's it was very cramped but now they have the Airbuses there is loads of room.

Would agree in general it is frustrating jammed in to a middle seat with a larger person either side of you.
 
Stretch said:
And why bring smokers into the equation, you haven't been able to smoke on airlines for sometime now, and now you can't smoke in any public place. There's is no situation where you're forced to put up with other peoples smoke, and it certain won’t cost you any money. Tbh honest using smokers to mitigate stuffing your face with junk food to the point of inconveniencing others members of the public is ridiculous
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No. Just no.
Smokers stink more than people with BO. I can handle a bit of BO, but a smoker wearing clothes that stink of smoke, horrific.
So when a smoker sits next to me on a plane, yes I am forced to put up with it.

Another thing, taxing the fat is discrimination. taxing the heavy is not. I bet some of you dont even realise that muscle weighs more than fat, all this whinging about fat people for weight!
 
Stretch said:
Its not a case of humiliating some customers, it's a case of being fare to everyone. If I had to sit next to a fat person and they were intruding on my personal space I'd make sure the airline provided me with another seat. The space on a plane is limited enough anyway without having some obese person spilling his/her gut into your lap on a long haul flight. It's just unacceptable. Any persons I know who are over weight to the point of not fitting in the seats properly has to common decency to buy a first class/business class ticket. It's their problem, not the airlines or other customers.

And why bring smokers into the equation, you haven't been able to smoke on airlines for sometime now, and now you can't smoke in any public place. There's is no situation where you're forced to put up with other peoples smoke, and it certain won’t cost you any money. Tbh honest using smokers to mitigate stuffing your face with junk food to the point of inconveniencing others members of the public is ridiculous
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I agree the airlines need to try and be fair to everyone as far as that is possible, really my response was a slightly visceral reaction to some of the stupid suggestions in this thread (i.e. have a seat everyone has to sit in, if you dont fit then your forced to buy an extra seat or not fly etc)

Indeed, imagine if one of the pre flight checks was "can you just stand on these scales over here sir/madame" the airlines would instantly lose about 50% of their custom as I would hazard a guess that many ppl would chose not to fly rather than be subjected to very personal scrutiny in a public place.

I introduced smokers (in a very brief context, hence the brackets) as I thought it was a reasonable way to highlight the fact that fat people should not be treated the same as smokers. I should have given it more context, I did not of course mean on planes, i meant in general. As a society we have now effectively ousted smokers to the curb, there are many that would want fat people to all be sent to some farm somewhere and left to die, they hate them that much. Its this attitude I was trying to highlight but needed more of an explanation to do so.

I guess what I was trying to say was that I just don't feel fat people deserve the same visceral hate from thinner people that smokers get from non smokers as on the whole, they simply do not effect thin people in the same way as smokers effect non smokers. Most probably won't agree :)

And, before anyone asks, yes I am coming from a position of knowledge, I was a podgy kid and suffered massively through school due to playground antics, I thought though as I grew up this would become less, I had always been taught that grownups didnt take the michael out of other people because of how they look, until that stupid food critic (cant remember his name, the one up his own behind who appears on Gordon Ramsey's F Word every now and then) made a program basically saying all fat people are bad bad people and were ruining society for the good, thin people. Then suddenly it was like open season!

I can understand that having somebody sat next to you who is so big that they are physically spilling into your own seat would be very annoying, indeed it would probably annoy me but these very unemotional, "practical" solutions to the problem (make them pay more etc) will never materialise as airlines recognise they cannot alienate customers. What they may want to consider is perhaps not cramming customers into the cheaper sections of their planes like sardines... never mind being fat, simply being over 6 ft can make plane travel prohibitive in anything other than 1st class for some!
 
it's not the fat peoples fault that planes dont make big seats for them, and it's understandable that the airlines want to cram as many people into a plane as they can, but it's not fair that other paying customers are made uncomfortable by being seated next to a fat person, I think the airlines should provide two seats for very large people on a plane, I don't see the logic in the argument 'it's not fair, they are getting two seats for the price of one!' - they are getting one seat for themselves as are you. Of course the airline would then put up prices to compensate for any loss of profit and we would all have to pay the price, and that doesn't sound fair either so I now really have no idea what to think
 
I flew back from France a few weeks ago and a man the size of a small car got on. He couldn't do his seatbelt up so he had to get an extender.

He then ordered a pizza, a sandwich, drinks and a packet of crisps. This was on a 1 hour 15 minute flight!!!!!
 
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