Airline to charge overweight passengers more

http://www.smh.com.au/travel/travel-news/airline-to-charge-overweight-passengers-more-20130402-2h495.html

by suchabag • 13 years ago

21 39 13 years ago

smh.com.au

quasque• 13 years ago

This seems unnecessarily discriminatory. It also means that taller people get a worse deal - already having to deal with cramped seating, now there is a premium on the extra body weight due to height.

DoubleCluster• 13 years ago

I'd think that with the extra money you're paying they could offer you more legroom. I'd have no trouble with paying more if I'm taking up more weight and space.

smky80• 13 years ago

You need to do the Sydney to Los Angeles 14 hour flight in economy with someone who weighs 350 lbs in the seat next to you, their body spilling over into your seat.

If nothing else I think they should charge more by the horizontal area you take up.

chrismorgan2• 13 years ago

Much the same thing happens with cars. Assuming the same car, a heavy person will find the car costs more to run than a light person. This sort of pricing model would simply be continuing doing that sort of passing the cost on to the customer.

As it stands, small and light people are being discriminated against: they are subsidising the large heavy people. People just don't talk about it that way, normally.

seanmcdirmid4• 13 years ago

I don't think you understand what discriminate means.

panacea• 13 years ago

You're cargo on an airplane. I think it's fair for airlines to charge by weight. My reasoning blurs a bit though when it comes to height. I'm tall and skinny. I'd pay for extra leg room, but I don't cost the airline extra carbon burning and neighbouring passenger discomfort to get me somewhere.

Ideally, we could computer model our desired seating arrangement and pay accordingly. If you don't want to pay for your waist-line, you don't travel.

chiph2• 13 years ago

Pay for the "Economy Plus" seats. They're like $20 more on Delta, and you get 2-3" more legroom. Totally worth it.

But in general, airlines like tighter seat pitch as it lets them (perhaps) get another row into the cabin, and that's another 4-9 passengers per flight.

Seatguru has a sortable grid of seat layout. I won't be on airberlin anytime soon (29" seat pitch, no way!)

http://www.seatguru.com/charts/longhaul_economy.php

bobdvb• 13 years ago

My wife once had an argument with check-in staff who wanted to charge her for having excess baggage, as I gather she successfully argued that as she weighed just 53kg the extra baggage was less than the difference between her and some other passengers.

The nice thing about this method is that business travellers could get lower pricing because they generally travel without much luggage. Plus my wife and I are generally 10kg under the allowance when we travel, so it could work out economical for me if bought to Europe.

madaxe• 13 years ago

I find a fiery death due to a poorly trimmed light aircraft caused by the family of human blimps sat in the back row discriminatory.

Weight distribution matters, particularly when you're in a single prop 8 seater. If some dude rocks up on the tarmac expecting to fly, but weighs as much as four other passengers combined, you'll have a hard time distributing that mass. Also, with light aircraft, your incremental fuel cost per pound of fat is that much more noticeable.

For the record, I'm both a pilot and a, um, Rubenesque, fellow.

ohwp• 13 years ago

Excluding or rejecting people without arbitrary reason is called discrimination. Since weight is a big issue in fuel consumption I don't think you can call this discriminatory.

But when you are charged extra because your weight is above X, it is discriminatory. So airlines should not charge extra but should charge by kilo-distance.

camus• 13 years ago

And if you're fat , do you get bigger seats ? lol ;) and when you make a reservation do you need to enter your weight ?

jsmcgd• 13 years ago

"Under the new system, Samoa Air passengers must type in their weight and the weight of their baggage into the online booking section of the airline's website. The rates vary depending on the distance flown: from $1 per kilogram on the airline's shortest domestic route to about $4.16 per kilogram for travel between Samoa and American Samoa. Passengers are then weighed again on scales at the airport, to check that they weren't fibbing online."

Samuel_Michon6• 13 years ago

Believe it or not, Airbus is working on it. Regular people will get smaller seats than they do now, while fat people get wider seats.

“Airbus recently said in a press release it will offer extra-wide seats on its A320 planes, "providing adequate space for those who need it, while giving airline operators a new method to generate additional revenue." Instead of having three 18-inch seats in a row, the new arrangement will have one 20-inch and two 17-inch seats.”

eksith• 13 years ago

For some reason Pulp Fiction popped into my head.

I'm a little ambivalent about this. On one hand, obese people have enough of a hard time just getting by without the extra burden of social commentary and (let's face it) the "look at that guy" sentiment. On the other hand the airlines are having to spend more in fuel when prices are already high.

Samuel_Michon6• 13 years ago

“obese people have enough of a hard time just getting by”

Do they really? Especially in the US and UK, where obesity has really gotten out of hand, people don't even recognize it anymore. Only the super obese (BMI >45) get the “look at that guy” comments. In reality, obese is BMI >30. For instance, if you're 5'10" and you weigh 210 lbs, you're obese.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classification_of_obesity

gambiting4• 13 years ago

It's a Samoan airline, and apparently over 90% of Samoans over the age of 15 are overweight. I wonder how is that possible?

arethuza2• 13 years ago

BMI is a pretty silly measure - a professional rugby player could have a BMI over 30 and be pure muscle - probably the same for American football players.

DanBC2• 13 years ago

And the article is talking about Samoa, where about 20% of babies are macrosomal, and about 25% of males are obese by the age of 18 months.

casca• 13 years ago

This is a great marketing move as it tries something that many people who are charged $/£/€/?50+ for an overweight kilogram will have muttered at checkin desks.

The truth is that it doesn't work because the bag restrictions are there for reasons unrelated to the weight of passengers.

Firstly there's the baggage handlers. Some airports charge the airlines extra for heavier bags so it's a way to discourage a charge to the airline. But far more than that, even in the olden days before most airlines charged for checked baggage, it's a great way to extract additional revenue from the customers in a context of it being the customers' fault.

rlpb• 13 years ago

> The truth is that it doesn't work because the bag restrictions are there for reasons unrelated to the weight of passengers.

The truth is that a big proportion of the cost of a flight is fuel, and therefore weight.

seanmcdirmid4• 13 years ago

Lets not forget the whole fuselage thingy.

gambiting4• 13 years ago

There's that, but a plane will use a measurable amount of fuel more for each additional kilogram on board. It's not insignificant, too.

chrismorgan2• 13 years ago

Such a pity that it's so close to April 1. Unfortunately I think it's just too sensible to be serious.

I wish the poll had been made with a question of body mass adjacent; I expect the average weight of nay-sayers would be greater than that of aye-sayers.

nakedrobot2• 13 years ago

"Samoa Air passengers must type in their weight and the weight of their baggage into the online booking section of the airline's website."

Uh, Ok, good luck with that :-)

Samuel_Michon6• 13 years ago

“Passengers are then weighed again on scales at the airport, to check that they weren't fibbing online.”

dfxm122• 13 years ago

Why bother asking when reserving at all then? How do people even know how much their bag is going to weigh before they pack?

I don't even own a scale. I can estimate my own weight, but not the weight of a bag whose contents have yet to be determined.

rextex• 13 years ago

Please HN, I hear so many self righteous skinny people clammering over each other about what a great idea it is. Great, please invest in this airline then. That one that provides an unpleasant experience for obese people and is operating in one of the most obese countries in the world. I'm sure it will be super profitable and you can all use your dividends to not enjoy a sandwich together.

Airline to charge overweight passengers more

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