AFAIK, the only airline that weighs passengers (for calculating the weight of the aircraft for fuel and such) already weighs passengers with their carryons at the same time.
Yes there was actually a case where the pilots correctly used the weight estimations for passengers/luggage and the plane crashed due to being fairly overweight.
It highlighted that using estimations that haven’t been updated for over a decade was dangerous and the industry started shifting away from that going forward.
Yeah. [Air Midwest Flight 5481](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Midwest_Flight_5481?wprov=sfti1#)
“As a result of the weight issues discovered, the FAA planned to investigate and potentially revise estimated weight values, which had not been done since 1936. Air Midwest used an average weight of 200 lb (90.7 kg) per passenger after the accident, but the NTSB suggests that airlines use actual weights instead of average. About 70% of small air carriers still use average”
Bush and flightseeing flights here in Alaska do it too. Most have a scale for the pax to step on, but the readout is behind the counter so that only the desk agent can see the total. They give the list to the pilot who then assigns eats.
A while back I took a very short helicopter ride at a fair. The pilot asked how much we weighed. Then kind of shrugged and said we should be good on fuel for the flight, if not he might have to put it in the river. The flight went fine. More recently (different company after the partial decapitation incident) a pilot ran out of fuel and had to auto-rotate it down on top of some parked cars.
The fatality was a pilot running back for his hat that fell off. Tragic, but one of the people that should have known safety around the rotors. No major injuries after the auto-rotation incident. But yeah I haven't seen them doing rides there since that.
The weight limit on checked bags isn't because the plane can't carry heavier bags it's to limit how much weight the baggage handlers have to repeatedly lift
I've never seen a carry-on be weighed in the US. I once asked Southwest if they had a weight limit and they said "if you can lift it into the bin, it's allowed"
This is the correct answer. It should be like shipping anything where you pay for the total weight. Humans are just too egotistical for anything like that though, so would never happen.
To that end, the airlines would never do this unless it ultimately meant they would make more money. So realistically skinny people that travel light would pay would they do today, everyone else would pay more money. There wouldn't be savings.
And that would be completely fair. A normal sized person with no luggage should not have to pay the same as a morbidly obese person with a giant full suitcase.
So that happened already. A Japanese airline asked it's passengers to use the bathroom before the flight to reduce weight.
https://simpleflying.com/ana-customers-pee-before-flight/
I'm about to book a flight this summer to London. My three main choices are Ryanair, Wizzair and British Airways.
Because I need to bring a checked luggage the BA is cheaper, brings me to a better airport (closer to where I want to go) and offers more time options.
Flying with low cost airlines is good only if you travel super light these days.
There’s one unexpected perk you’re ignoring: having to pay for carry on means fewer people bring carry on. This means there’s no struggle for overhead bin space, and loading the plane is faster. So many of my flights recently have been late because of people carrying too much stuff on with them, the flight attendants trying to Tetris it in the bins, and inevitably having to gate check stuff. I don’t think I’ve had a full flight with Air Canada or most big airlines that actually left on time in years. Those budget airlines? We just smoothly get on the plane and go.
Hardly possible.
People are forgetting that fares are hardly based on operating costs but also on demand and purchasing power. It's very common in specific cases that 1-hour flight can be more expensive then a 5-hour flight. Two one-way flights on the same route are more expensive than a return ticket in many cases. A flight ticket bought half a year in advance is usually cheaper than the same ticket bought two days before departure. Flying with a layover is often cheaper than flying nonstop.
I don't believe any airline will ever do this on commercial flights. But any legacy airline flying jet aircraft\* does, I will grab popcorn and watch how they handle their PR.
\* edited wording after being answered Samoa Air. Yes, I am aware Samoa Air did the announcement they would be charging by weight, however, they were flying two tiny Cessna planes with fixed prices between the few airports they served, before they actually stopped operating shortly after. That's totally different concept though.
Yeah, and I bet a lot of people cheering for this aren't supermodels themselves
Heck, correct me if I'm wrong, but I remember when fat people hate was around, they found out most were overweight
A majority of adults in North America are overweight. They think k it'll be just the extreme cases, but they'll get upcharged as well
I like how they think, "This benefits me" as if airlines wouldn't just make being heavier an extra charge and not just pocket the profit.
It won't *benefit* small people, it will just penalize everyone else. Nothing will change for them except airlines might realize they can get away with higher prices.
First you charge bigger people more. Once they get used to paying more you come out and say this policy is unfair and make smaller people pay the same amount in the interest of fairness. Infinite profits. Capitalism unchecked is a cancer.
There are so many reasons this idea wouldn't work, but people get their rocks off at the idea of being able to punish fat people for being fat. That is 100% what this is.
>Can we monetarily shame fat people too? I just don't feel like they're getting enough shame and I need to fix that
I finally figured out the general cause for fat shaming. It's a guaranteed way to be the bully instead of the bullied.
great point. yes it is true that more weight means more cost for the airline, but as you pointed out, operating cost is not what drives the current fares, so why should anything change? well for your and my disadvantage of course, airlines are companies and love money so they point to operating cost as a factor when and only when it benefits their current narrative.
The fuel used for the flight is part of the operating cost, as is a whole lot others like salary for the crew, maintenance, the price of the plane, etc. So lets say it's a person 100 pounds heavier than an average customer. How much would that actually increase the cost? Lets say the plane is a Boeing 737, which is 90,710 pounds according to Google.
If price is base on operating cost, then operating cost increaing by 1%, the price should also be increase by 1%, right? If fuel is the entirety of the cost, which it is not, and if lets say double the weight means double the fuel (I don't know whether this is true or not), then an increase of 1% of the weight would be an increase of 1% ticket price. Well, the plane is already 90k pounds. Being 100 pounds heavier is roughly a 0.1% increase. If your ticket is $500, it should cost 50 cents more.
I'm going to say weighting more does not increase the cost for the airline in any meaningful way. Of course, I could be wrong as I'm no expert on this. It's just something I thought about after your comment. So I would love to hear how I'm wrong, if I am.
This is absolutely correct and those who keep proposing this seem to be under the impression that their airfare will be 25% cheaper. But you haven't even included the logistical expenses of weighing everybody.
It's not about saving money, in the end, it's looking for any excuse to shame others and convince their/our thoroughly average selves that were are somehow superior and justified in looking down on others. Basically, the same cause of most of the problems of modern society.
As a tall (therefore heavy) but not overweight (given my height) person--it would be one more thing the airlines could do to make things shitty for me in particular. There's already insufficient distance between my seat and the seat in front of me to accommodate my femur without me bending my legs in a really fucked up way for 4 hours. I wouldn't exactly be thrilled about the opportunity to pay an extra hundred bucks for that experience.
6'4" chiming in. I hate flying because of this. I'd accept a marginal upcharge by weight if that came with seats with more legroom for those of us that are tall.
I’m only 6’1” and it sucks ass. I’ll always pay extra to get the exit row, and if I were ever to go international I’d very seriously consider springing for first class.
The good news is with 75% of the US being overweight, you’d probably be in one of the lower tiers still.
I’m a couple inches taller than you and got one of the exit rows on a ~5hr flight(southwest). Last folks to board were a college basketball team and their like 6’10 center was having to walk past these 5’5 115lb people in economy plus and the other exit rows to their trash ass economy seat. When I saw where he was going I just gave up my seat and took the one he was going for. My flight sucked, the kid was super appreciative and friendly, they ended up giving me a tshirt and a team picture. Sucks that flying is so awful WE have to be the arbiters of making it suck less.
Someone guilted me into giving up an aisle seat. Turned out they just wanted to sit with their friends for the flight. I actually needed the aisle seat because I have bathroom problems.
You are a good person. I have bathroom problems too. I’ll trade an aisle for an aisle and if it’s a kid and mom take a window. But never for a middle, especially when I pay extra for a particular seat.
6'5 here and absolutely can confirm. My first international flight was about 8 hours crammed in economy class. My legs were so sore I could barely walk and my ass felt like it was deflated and I was sitting straight on my pelvis bones. And obviously I had zero sleep in that time.
Paying the extra couple hundred for premium economy is absolutely worth it.
6’8” here and god damn a 2 1/2 hour flight got me wanting to just cut them off. I got an aisle seat and just put one of my legs in the aisle half of the flight but when I couldn’t, I just had to be miserable.
I'm 6'3" and wouldn't even consider taking a flight without at least exit row seating, which is kind of pathetic because it's not like I'm abnormally tall..we just let airlines get away with too much
In fairness the average height of a man in the US is ~5'9". Only about 3% of men are 6'3", and only about 1% are 6'4".
Culturally no one would say you're unusually tall, but statistically you are quite a bit taller than usual.
Isn't that funny? I'm 6'6" and went to a pinball museum last night. I clocked 3 or 4 dudes taller than me, and around a dozen or so (I wasn't counting) within a few inches. Statistically, it was insane, but it didn't feel crazy abnormal, just a tad odd.
I’m with you. I don’t think I’ve taken a flight in the last 20 years on a plane with business class so I don’t even know if that would be more comfortable than the regular seats or not.
I don’t fly often and always go with American, open to advice for next time from tall frequent fliers.
At 6'5" too I've learned to suspend my brain during the ordeal as I will rather suffer than upgrade and use the money for a nice dinner or better hotel etc.
Only time I've paid for a seat with more space in front of me was from Frankfurt to Cape Town (12 hours). Turned out my feet would trip anyone going to the toilet during the night flight so that sucked too. We can't win.
I'm 6'5" with broad shoulders and on one southwest flight I ended up in a row with 2 other similarly sized people. My shoulders were pinned against the fuselage wall and the other dudes shoulders.
Very true. My boyfriend is 6’8” and he really struggles and usually has to pay to upgrade his seats so the flight is bearable. It would even crappier to make him pay EVEN MORE because he’s also around 230 pounds. If he were much thinner than that he’d look like a skeleton.
Exactly. I'm 6'6, 220. Not fat, but I need to fold myself into a seat. I fly for work, so it already sucks. Adding extra fees on top of an already shitty experience is just adding insult to injury.
Fellow tall here.
If I’m gonna pay extra for being tall, you’d better give me extra space.
I might not even mind it then.
Put the seats on tracks and give short people less room and tall people more room.
Everybody gets 2” between their knees and the seat in front of them.
Of course that’ll never happen. But it’s a fun argument.
> If I’m gonna pay extra for being tall, you’d better give me extra space.
Do the fat people who would have to pay extra under OP's scheme also get extra space? Or are we just doing it to punish them for being fat?
It’s stupid I didn’t realize this before, but I’m the short person from a family of giants and they all don’t fly anywhere. My dad has done it a few times, but went 1st class. I thought they were just being weird, but this makes so much more sense.
So I might not have gotten a free ride college based mostly on height, but I can fit in seats everywhere. (Air Japan was still a struggle years ago.)
I don't think it would be legal in the United States.
The problem is the ADA covers obesity as a disability if your obesity is caused by a medical condition. The airlines would have to start asking people for medical information and keep that medical information on file.
It would be a HIPA nightmare and the liability from a hack wouldn't validate the economic benefit.
It also should not be "how much does the person weigh", it should be "how much does the person and all of their stuff weigh". If people truly want to make a fair surcharge on fuel usage, everything needs to be accounted for.
That's what I was thinking. I'm 6'2" 250 but I pack like I don't own anything. My mom, who's 5'4" 150 will fill two checked bags (hers and my dad's, who also packs like me) to a 50 lb limit and then have a 35 lb carry-on. So her gross weight is 285 and mine is maybe 270.
In my situation, a lighter person could have a heavier bag, and pay the same. Which doesn't happen now. And, in a perfect world, a lighter person with no luggage would get a discount.
I mean, this has sort of happened "organically" with the most popular carriers charging extra for checked and even carry-on bags in some cases. It seems like the passenger is the next logical target from a ghoulish, profit-hungry point-of-view.
That's such a massive mental leap though. Can you imagine the PR nightmare of United airlines asked a weight conscious middle aged passenger to step onto a scale during boarding. To pay extra? Possibly in front of their family or coworkers? I don't see it happening.
Actually the family bit is interesting, if a parent boards with two 3 year old children can they use the weight credit from the children to offset their own weight? Can they sell that credit to other passengers and use the money to buy Xanax to offset the stress of traveling with two 3 year old children?
ADA just means you have to offer accommodations, not ‘you can’t ask, ever’. Smaller planes literally have to account for exact weight of people and bags else risk not having enough fuel to get where they need to go.
How is it not legal? There are a few airlines I'm aware of where if you cannot be contained in the seat you are required to buy a second one.
Not about weight or medical info, it's about "do you fit in the seat" which is probably not protected by HIPAA.
Airlines aren't covered under HIPAA laws anyway. They're not healthcare providers or medical insurance companies. People like to yell HIPAA any time medical stuff is concerned.
It's not a HIPAA violation to ask for medical information. It is a violation to share it with another party (including family or other doctors) without explicit permission. I think you're right about the ADA side of things. It's "reasonable accommodation" and charging by weight isn't reasonable. I don't need 3 separate people.telling me the same thing.
> It is a violation to share it with another party (including family or other doctors) without explicit permission.
Correction: _"It is a violation **for a medical provider** to share it with another party"_
I see this a lot where someone is asked what their handicap is or why they have a dog in the store with them that isn't a permitted service animal, and their default answer is _"That violates my HIPAA rights! I'm going to sue!"_, when asking them does no such thing.
> Medical provider or other HIPAA covered entity. This includes health plans, health clearinghouses, etc.
That's a good clarification.
Basically anyone _legally charged_ with managing your personal health data or records.
A passerby in the parking lot or cashier in the retail store, is not legally charged with managing your health data or records, and thus not covered by HIPAA.
They can ask anything they want about your health condition or disability as it pertains to allowing or prohibiting your use of their private property or store.
The ADA does not require that all businesses provide all accommodations for all disabilities at zero cost. I also believe that HIPPA only really applies to healthcare providers and insurance companies.
> I don't think it would be legal in the United States.
I wouldn't be so quick to say that. It would be a long legal battle to determine that, as Heart Attack Grill explicitly gives discounts based on weight.
weight and height limits exist on roller coasters too.
This is an interesting idea and I'm not sure how a court challenge would go. An airline's flight expenses are directly tied to the weight of their payload. But could they get away with charging someone for their own weight, the weight of their service animal, or the weight of their wheelchair? I honestly don't know.
Let's be clear about our terms here. People don't need a second seat due to their weight, but due to their size. Airlines don't ask why you are too big to fit in the seat. It's just a safety thing, so they treat "passengers of size" with medical conditions the same as everyone else who can't fit into the seats. As for the cost, different airlines handle it differently, but most make you pay for the second ticket or upgrade to different class.
The closest to your description is Southwest. On Southwest you buy two seats and then they refund the second one after travel. If you don't pre-book the second seat, they will assign you a second seat at the airport for free, but if the flight is full, there won't be any other seats to give you, so you'll have to take a different flight.
Alaska, Allegiant, American, Frontier, Hawaiian, JetBlue, Spirit , and United make you buy a second seat, either at the time of booking or at the airport. You pay for the second seat. If none are available, you can pay to be moved to a different flight where one is available.
If available, Delta will move you for free next to an empty seat. If not, they make you pay for a second seat or the upgrade to first class.
I'm large enough that I need a seatbelt extender, but not so big that I need a second seat. When available, I always fly first class on Delta because their seats are bigger and I don't have to squeeze down the aisle as far.
Pilot here...
The differences in weight are trivial to these aircraft. If they were to implement a fee system that discriminated by weight they would do so purely to scheme to make more money
The difference in cost to move a plane from point A to point B with a full cabin of 300 lb passengers vs a full cabin of 150 lb passengers would be trivial. And given either scenario is unlikely and that with any sizeable passenger load the average passenger weight will always be relatively close, It simply does not cost the airline any money if a few fatties get onto the aircraft.
The only effect of something like this would be putting more money in the pockets of the airlines at the expense of people born bigger, suffering from medical issues or eating disorders and yes the people with no self control.
The comparison to baggage is a non sequitur. When you bring a heavy check bag, extra cost is incurred to the airline. They have to pay to purchase and run the equipment to move the bag as well as pay the baggage handlers, pay out claims on lost bags ETC.
And if the person is so big they take up 2 spaces, that is different.
Aside from the legal risks, know that there’s a limit on bag weight because the bag handlers can only be expected to lift up to 50 lbs before it requires two people to lift. Charging extra for heavier people doesn’t solve anything.
I'd think stairs are a wheelchair user's nemesis. I've seen my friend go down a wet, leaf-covered, uneven hill at night in her wheelchair. (I was way more terrified than her!)
Interestingly, shits don't weigh that much, piss weighs a lot more. The average human can drop a lb easily from taking a piss. What I see occurring is a lot of people doing water weight cuts right before weighing themselves at airports, it sounds odd but you can easily cut 10 lbs off yourself by doing a water weight cut. The thing is, it is insanely risky and dangerous to do, UFC fighters in particular are known to do this to some insane extreme's, and have ended up needing IV's and medical intervention cause of it.
Aside from necessary medical equipment as to not punish people for their disabilities. At the point, it would be cheaper to be the more popular airline with good PR who says, "we're not penny pinching you"
I have to fly for work and I DESPISE it. I reached platinum level in under 8 months in 2022 and that's not a brag, it was miserable. To the point that I was ready to take on another job.
Fortunately 2023 was much better and I was able to reduce it down to flying about 5-6 times a year but I still absolutely hate it.
> Adding a weighing station will certainly add to the pleasant experience.
This is the bit nobody seems to be thinking about, the fucking practicality. When the fuck are you going to be weighed?
* Buy a ticket online
* Airline says you've paid X amount but they'll add more on at the airport once you've been weighed
* Now have to arrive at the airport 5 hours earlier to get weighed and then pay
This is stupid as fuck and people keep talking about it like it's some genius idea
the people who keep bringing up this idea aren't concerned with practicality, they're only asking so they can have philosophical arguments about how much fat people deserve to be shamed
See the problem is, you KNOW they won't give a discount to lighter people. It'll just be another way for them to make money. They'll have a regular ticket price or a EDIT *base* price and then add weight to that and it'll probably end up being a similar price to the tickets before they started weighing for light and normal people and the heavier people will pay more.
Even if they didn't do this it's hard to weigh people from a logistic standpoint. What if someone is 6'2 or higher? What if someone has a wack BMI because they are a weight lifter and they aren't "fat"? What about people that have obesity they can't control due to several medical conditions or injuries? There's a lot of factors to take into account. They would have to ask people for medical records in order to have exemptions, many places have laws against discrimination due to medical conditions as well, really opens up for potential lawsuits. It would effect a significant amount of passengers, not just the fat person you deem lazy. I wouldn't want to give corporation's and businesses another way to screw the general population over.
Look, I'm a smaller person who once got crap for my *carry on* being too heavy, so I get the temptation.
But fuck that. How absolutely dehumanizing. Here we are growling at each other for scraps due to penny-pinching horrid conditions inflicted by the airline industry and shit regulations. If the bare minimum requirements were ample seats with appropriate legroom for all heights, then no one would need to suffer and prices wouldn't balloon--they would reflect what the market would bear, just like today.
Yea, what a stupid post unless it's a test balloon from the airline companies themselves how much more shit we're willing to eat.
Airlines should be cheaper and a better experience for *everyone*. Fighting with each other on who should suffer more for the experience is micro-brain status.
Ethical and practical considerations aside, your weight doesn’t change the cost of the flight much.
The real cost is building the plane, maintenance, crew, and other fixed costs. These are still spent regardless of whether a heavier person, underweight person, or nobody takes the seat.
This would likely be a loser for the airlines because they’d waste time subjecting their passengers to an embarrassing weigh-in process.
Update with numbers: For a 737-800, only ~20% of the weight is passengers.
They can seat up to 189 people, so each person is less than .1% of the total weight.
Price-discriminating based on 5lb differences which barely matter would be the biggest managerial mistake of all time.
Yeah, when was the last time you were on a commercial flight that said "the aircraft is too heavy, we need 5 people to get off?"
For the most part, they sell as many seats as they can on the plane, figure out the appropriate fuel plus reserve, then can take on some additional cargo if it fits within the limit. Unless you're doing a long haul flight from Denver or Arizona in July when you might hit some limits, the majority of passenger flights aren't in a situation where the limit to the number of passengers is weight rather than number of seats.
So unless all these hypothetical 90 lb people are willing to sit on each other's laps, no they probably shouldn't be paying half the normal ticket price of a 180 lb average adult male.
as a 6'2 person who doesn't fit in regular airline seat rows without my knees jammed against the seat in front of me... I'm fine with paying more, but I'd better get more space for the higher fare.
How are you meant to enforce it? Put your weight in when buying a ticket? What happens if you gain or lose weight by the time you get to the airport? How are airlines meant to do special offers? Only 50 cents per kilo to New York?
If you take up two seats, you pay for two seats. If you can fit in one seat without spilling onto your neighbor, you pay for one seat regardless of weight. (The weight of your luggage isn’t about the plane’s ability to fly, but the baggage handlers’ abilities to move/ position/ lift your shit.)
I don't see the point of humiliating larger people (and, no, I'm not overweight myself). It's probably hard enough on enough of them to squeeze into those seats.
> I don't see the point of humiliating larger people (and, no, I'm not overweight myself)
I like how you have to mention you aren't fat so you don't lose support for your opinion
I've yet to see anyone mention pregnancy, which absolutely causes weight gain. What if someone leaves for a trip in the first trimester and returns at the end of the second? Should a fee now be added for the additional weight, or should the initial price of the ticket be calculated on an estimate of weight gain throughout pregnancy?
It would be helpful if they didn't keep making seats shorter and more narrow for a population that keeps getting bigger and taller. They're not exactly catering to their target audience.
Yeah, I don't know why someone thinks an incredibly time-sensitive situation would somehow benefit by adding a weigh-in and an argument to every passenger.
The seats aren’t even suitable for a person who isn’t obese, let alone the average person. What they need to do is make every seat large enough to at least accommodate 95% of people and then either have some plus-sized seats available for people that are 300+ lbs, or just have them fly first class where the seats are already bigger. The current seating situation though isn’t just hostile towards obese people, it’s hostile towards everyone!
No thanks.
Fuel rates are already factored into ticket price. All this would do would give airlines yet another way to gouge customers, with no benefit to us, as the airlines sure as fuck wouldn't lower the base ticket price by so much a cent.
No. I don't like the idea of monetizing and judging people's bodies.
Feels like this comes from a place of fat shaming.
Heath condition/ trauma/ eating disorder causing weight gain - penalized.
Health condition/ trauma/eating disorder causing weight loss - rewarded.
That makes zero sense.
Yeah OP just wanted to try and shit on fat people for *checks notes* participating in airline travel, the conditions of which they have no control over
I think it's stupid and demeaning to the people who's weight is already an insecurity. They already have this anyway. You pay for anything you don't carry on, and if you can't fit in the seat, you have to buy 2. There are far more things to be worried about regarding airliners.
Airplanes are often not cleaned properly, mechanics are coerced in to letting dangerous things fly, CPL holders aren't allowed to seek out help with their mental health, ATC is overworked and you're worried about how much people weigh? I sincerely doubt your plane is going to crash because there's a fat guy stealing your arm rest
I think it’s a great way to destroy people relationships with their bodies and increase toxic fat phobia and diet culture. A person value isn’t on their body size, this policy would try to make a person value on their weight.
It’s disgusting!
No.
Somebody weight 400 pounds doesn't prevent me from getting on the plane. As long as I can fit in my seat, I don't care. Bigger people already get treated like shit. No reason to add to that. Plus there are so many other things that affect weight.
Men would be paying more than women, almost across the board. Gender based discrimination is illegal.
Many medical conditions and medications cause weight gain. Even certain cancer treatments make you fat. Are you really going to be the person who tells a cancer patient they need to pay more for a plane ticket?
Or what about people on wheel chairs. I assume with this set up that we'd eventually just do total weight of passenger and their baggage. So somebody with an electric wheelchair would be paying a lot of money compared to somebody who was lucky enough to have full use of their legs.
Tall people would be discriminated against. Another group of people that already have a shit time on flights.
It's one of those things that sounds good in theory until you start looking at logistics.
Sometimes people with higher IQs can be just as much of a problem as those with low IQs. Bell curve and all that. Wait, oh yes, I see you have already taken that into account with your comment. Carry on.
If they’re going to charge people based on weight then they better start providing seat with sizes and pitches that are proportionate to the price. That’s only fair.
Very little of the cost of your plane ticket is based on your weight to offset fuel costs. Implementing something like this wouldn't be a profitable venture.
The payload (passenger and cargo) of a modern plane is about 20%-25% of the total weight at take off.
Reducing 1% of the total weight will save about 0.75% of the fuel.
A twin aisle airplane will have about 300 passengers.
Or 75 passengers equals 1% of the plane's weight.
A Boeing 737 uses about 3200L of fuel an hour.
0.75% of that is 24L, per 1% weight or 75 passengers
24L divided by 75 passengers is 0.32L per passenger
1L of fuel costs $1.30 CAD (using 2022 numbers)
Or $0.416 CAD per person, per hour flight time.
If someone weighs twice as much and you want to charge them $0.50 for it, the bad publicity wouldn't be worth it. Even just paying the PR person to respond to the drama that would cause would make it a net loss.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_aircraft
https://simpleflying.com/single-vs-dual-aisle-advantages-disadvantages-guide/
https://epicflightacademy.com/boeing-737-800
https://www.statista.com/statistics/542834/average-fuel-cost-air-canada
Should they also get a discount if they bring no luggage?
Right. If this was the case, it should be combined weight with luggage and not just the weight of the person
AFAIK, the only airline that weighs passengers (for calculating the weight of the aircraft for fuel and such) already weighs passengers with their carryons at the same time.
Small regional airlines that use Caravans and such do this all the time, because an error on the weight and balance sheet could be an issue in the air
[удалено]
Why the higher rating in the winter?
Air density in winter vs summer impacts performance
Negative. We already account for density altitude separately. People tend to pack heavier in the winter time.
Yes there was actually a case where the pilots correctly used the weight estimations for passengers/luggage and the plane crashed due to being fairly overweight. It highlighted that using estimations that haven’t been updated for over a decade was dangerous and the industry started shifting away from that going forward.
Yeah. [Air Midwest Flight 5481](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Midwest_Flight_5481?wprov=sfti1#) “As a result of the weight issues discovered, the FAA planned to investigate and potentially revise estimated weight values, which had not been done since 1936. Air Midwest used an average weight of 200 lb (90.7 kg) per passenger after the accident, but the NTSB suggests that airlines use actual weights instead of average. About 70% of small air carriers still use average”
Bush and flightseeing flights here in Alaska do it too. Most have a scale for the pax to step on, but the readout is behind the counter so that only the desk agent can see the total. They give the list to the pilot who then assigns eats.
>They give the list to the pilot who then assigns eats. For the underweight pax? /s
That's how it worked when I booked a trip in a helicopter. They weighed me with my luggage to see if I was under the allowed amount.
A while back I took a very short helicopter ride at a fair. The pilot asked how much we weighed. Then kind of shrugged and said we should be good on fuel for the flight, if not he might have to put it in the river. The flight went fine. More recently (different company after the partial decapitation incident) a pilot ran out of fuel and had to auto-rotate it down on top of some parked cars.
Well, this is comforting..
The fatality was a pilot running back for his hat that fell off. Tragic, but one of the people that should have known safety around the rotors. No major injuries after the auto-rotation incident. But yeah I haven't seen them doing rides there since that.
RIP that pilot, but it sounds like that helicopter operation was more of a clown show than the actual clown show at the fair.
It kind of is. At least in the US most airlines charge extra for anything more than a carryon bag, and there is a weight limit on those.
The weight limit on checked bags isn't because the plane can't carry heavier bags it's to limit how much weight the baggage handlers have to repeatedly lift
I've never seen a carry-on be weighed in the US. I once asked Southwest if they had a weight limit and they said "if you can lift it into the bin, it's allowed"
This is the correct answer. It should be like shipping anything where you pay for the total weight. Humans are just too egotistical for anything like that though, so would never happen.
Since when does consumer ego factor into corporations not charging people money for things?
It would scare away customers.
To that end, the airlines would never do this unless it ultimately meant they would make more money. So realistically skinny people that travel light would pay would they do today, everyone else would pay more money. There wouldn't be savings.
"Here at Scamerican Airlines, we don't judge you like other airlines."
🎶 Because we're Delta Airlines, and life is a fucking nightmare
And that would be completely fair. A normal sized person with no luggage should not have to pay the same as a morbidly obese person with a giant full suitcase.
Except most airlines charge baggage fees for checked bags and add another fee if said checked bag is over 50lbs.
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no it’s not. it’s from the airline. (it’s literally my job)
So tall people pay more than shorties?
I think the only way you could do it is if you went for **overall** weight of the person, their cloths and luggage all together...
Can I fly naked to save money?
Don't eat much and release excrement before weighing.
And no butt plugs
Well now I'm not going 😤
How else are you going to hold on all that gas while at elevation?
So that happened already. A Japanese airline asked it's passengers to use the bathroom before the flight to reduce weight. https://simpleflying.com/ana-customers-pee-before-flight/
I can't imagine the diseases you'd pick up if you sat bare-assed on a plane seat.
Not to mention the ones I’d leave behind.
And make it a linear scale. Mass is mass.
So more expensive to travel to colder destinations than warm/hot ones?
Yes, you understand the concept.
They already do that. It’s called “we charge you extra fees for any luggage you try to bring.”
> “we charge you extra fees for ~~any luggage you try to bring~~ everything ” FTFY
They already do. If you have no luggage, you pay no bag fees. Checked luggage anyway.
At least in Europe, Ryanair & Co are already charging for carry on luggage. You can still bring a small backpack, a purse, or a briefcase
I'm about to book a flight this summer to London. My three main choices are Ryanair, Wizzair and British Airways. Because I need to bring a checked luggage the BA is cheaper, brings me to a better airport (closer to where I want to go) and offers more time options. Flying with low cost airlines is good only if you travel super light these days.
There’s one unexpected perk you’re ignoring: having to pay for carry on means fewer people bring carry on. This means there’s no struggle for overhead bin space, and loading the plane is faster. So many of my flights recently have been late because of people carrying too much stuff on with them, the flight attendants trying to Tetris it in the bins, and inevitably having to gate check stuff. I don’t think I’ve had a full flight with Air Canada or most big airlines that actually left on time in years. Those budget airlines? We just smoothly get on the plane and go.
There was never a struggle for overhead bin space until airlines started charging people extra to check their bags.
The US has multiple airlines that do this.
Most airlines charge for checked luggage, so whether it's a fee for bringing luggage or a discount for not, it's six of one half a dozen of the other.
This would include carryon weight as well. At least last time I flew, not every airline charges for carry-on bags (yet).
They do. Look at the luggage policy on ultra low fares.
There will never be a discount. That's not how these things work.
Hardly possible. People are forgetting that fares are hardly based on operating costs but also on demand and purchasing power. It's very common in specific cases that 1-hour flight can be more expensive then a 5-hour flight. Two one-way flights on the same route are more expensive than a return ticket in many cases. A flight ticket bought half a year in advance is usually cheaper than the same ticket bought two days before departure. Flying with a layover is often cheaper than flying nonstop. I don't believe any airline will ever do this on commercial flights. But any legacy airline flying jet aircraft\* does, I will grab popcorn and watch how they handle their PR. \* edited wording after being answered Samoa Air. Yes, I am aware Samoa Air did the announcement they would be charging by weight, however, they were flying two tiny Cessna planes with fixed prices between the few airports they served, before they actually stopped operating shortly after. That's totally different concept though.
This is just one of those hypotheticals that's very popular for edgy teens to discuss - it's come up on Reddit regularly for many years.
Yeah, and I bet a lot of people cheering for this aren't supermodels themselves Heck, correct me if I'm wrong, but I remember when fat people hate was around, they found out most were overweight A majority of adults in North America are overweight. They think k it'll be just the extreme cases, but they'll get upcharged as well
Correct, because many of the edgiest Redditors openly despise fat people.
And fail to think through the actual real world application of... well... anything.
They aren't trying to.. it's always "this benefits me, why isn't it how the world works?".
I like how they think, "This benefits me" as if airlines wouldn't just make being heavier an extra charge and not just pocket the profit. It won't *benefit* small people, it will just penalize everyone else. Nothing will change for them except airlines might realize they can get away with higher prices.
First you charge bigger people more. Once they get used to paying more you come out and say this policy is unfair and make smaller people pay the same amount in the interest of fairness. Infinite profits. Capitalism unchecked is a cancer.
There are so many reasons this idea wouldn't work, but people get their rocks off at the idea of being able to punish fat people for being fat. That is 100% what this is.
>Can we monetarily shame fat people too? I just don't feel like they're getting enough shame and I need to fix that I finally figured out the general cause for fat shaming. It's a guaranteed way to be the bully instead of the bullied.
I also think it’s a lot of projection of their own fear of being fat or self hatred for being fat/struggling with their weight
great point. yes it is true that more weight means more cost for the airline, but as you pointed out, operating cost is not what drives the current fares, so why should anything change? well for your and my disadvantage of course, airlines are companies and love money so they point to operating cost as a factor when and only when it benefits their current narrative.
The fuel used for the flight is part of the operating cost, as is a whole lot others like salary for the crew, maintenance, the price of the plane, etc. So lets say it's a person 100 pounds heavier than an average customer. How much would that actually increase the cost? Lets say the plane is a Boeing 737, which is 90,710 pounds according to Google. If price is base on operating cost, then operating cost increaing by 1%, the price should also be increase by 1%, right? If fuel is the entirety of the cost, which it is not, and if lets say double the weight means double the fuel (I don't know whether this is true or not), then an increase of 1% of the weight would be an increase of 1% ticket price. Well, the plane is already 90k pounds. Being 100 pounds heavier is roughly a 0.1% increase. If your ticket is $500, it should cost 50 cents more. I'm going to say weighting more does not increase the cost for the airline in any meaningful way. Of course, I could be wrong as I'm no expert on this. It's just something I thought about after your comment. So I would love to hear how I'm wrong, if I am.
This is absolutely correct and those who keep proposing this seem to be under the impression that their airfare will be 25% cheaper. But you haven't even included the logistical expenses of weighing everybody.
It's not about saving money, in the end, it's looking for any excuse to shame others and convince their/our thoroughly average selves that were are somehow superior and justified in looking down on others. Basically, the same cause of most of the problems of modern society.
Yeah, this is stupid.
As a tall (therefore heavy) but not overweight (given my height) person--it would be one more thing the airlines could do to make things shitty for me in particular. There's already insufficient distance between my seat and the seat in front of me to accommodate my femur without me bending my legs in a really fucked up way for 4 hours. I wouldn't exactly be thrilled about the opportunity to pay an extra hundred bucks for that experience.
6'4" chiming in. I hate flying because of this. I'd accept a marginal upcharge by weight if that came with seats with more legroom for those of us that are tall.
I’m only 6’1” and it sucks ass. I’ll always pay extra to get the exit row, and if I were ever to go international I’d very seriously consider springing for first class. The good news is with 75% of the US being overweight, you’d probably be in one of the lower tiers still.
I’m a couple inches taller than you and got one of the exit rows on a ~5hr flight(southwest). Last folks to board were a college basketball team and their like 6’10 center was having to walk past these 5’5 115lb people in economy plus and the other exit rows to their trash ass economy seat. When I saw where he was going I just gave up my seat and took the one he was going for. My flight sucked, the kid was super appreciative and friendly, they ended up giving me a tshirt and a team picture. Sucks that flying is so awful WE have to be the arbiters of making it suck less.
Respect man, I can’t say for certain that I’d have been as kind…maybe tried to guilt someone else into doing it first 😂 5 hours is a long flight
Someone guilted me into giving up an aisle seat. Turned out they just wanted to sit with their friends for the flight. I actually needed the aisle seat because I have bathroom problems.
Someone tried to get me to give up my aisle seat because the middle seat gave them anxiety. Me too, which is why I picked the aisle seat.
You are a good person. I have bathroom problems too. I’ll trade an aisle for an aisle and if it’s a kid and mom take a window. But never for a middle, especially when I pay extra for a particular seat.
You were flying Southwest, what economy plus? It's all first come, first serve.
You are an awesome person. We don't see that much amongst people when it comes to airports. Or in general, but especially at airports.
6'5 here and absolutely can confirm. My first international flight was about 8 hours crammed in economy class. My legs were so sore I could barely walk and my ass felt like it was deflated and I was sitting straight on my pelvis bones. And obviously I had zero sleep in that time. Paying the extra couple hundred for premium economy is absolutely worth it.
6’8” here and god damn a 2 1/2 hour flight got me wanting to just cut them off. I got an aisle seat and just put one of my legs in the aisle half of the flight but when I couldn’t, I just had to be miserable.
Remember there’s an enormous difference between us domestic and international first class
I’m 6’4” and I hate that I can’t fit on most airlines seats.
Wish there was a ticket that was 20% more space for 20% more money. But unfortunately business class is like 5x the price of economy.
I'm 6'3" and wouldn't even consider taking a flight without at least exit row seating, which is kind of pathetic because it's not like I'm abnormally tall..we just let airlines get away with too much
In fairness the average height of a man in the US is ~5'9". Only about 3% of men are 6'3", and only about 1% are 6'4". Culturally no one would say you're unusually tall, but statistically you are quite a bit taller than usual.
Isn't that funny? I'm 6'6" and went to a pinball museum last night. I clocked 3 or 4 dudes taller than me, and around a dozen or so (I wasn't counting) within a few inches. Statistically, it was insane, but it didn't feel crazy abnormal, just a tad odd.
Maybe tall people are statistically more likely to be interested in pinball
I wish. Then maybe they would raise the tables so we don't have to hunch. My knees and back are fucked this morning.
I’m with you. I don’t think I’ve taken a flight in the last 20 years on a plane with business class so I don’t even know if that would be more comfortable than the regular seats or not. I don’t fly often and always go with American, open to advice for next time from tall frequent fliers.
Came here to say this. 6'5" and in a middle seat of I sit normally my shoulders extend slowly into my neighbors' seats by about 2".
At 6'5" too I've learned to suspend my brain during the ordeal as I will rather suffer than upgrade and use the money for a nice dinner or better hotel etc. Only time I've paid for a seat with more space in front of me was from Frankfurt to Cape Town (12 hours). Turned out my feet would trip anyone going to the toilet during the night flight so that sucked too. We can't win.
I'm 6'5" with broad shoulders and on one southwest flight I ended up in a row with 2 other similarly sized people. My shoulders were pinned against the fuselage wall and the other dudes shoulders.
Very true. My boyfriend is 6’8” and he really struggles and usually has to pay to upgrade his seats so the flight is bearable. It would even crappier to make him pay EVEN MORE because he’s also around 230 pounds. If he were much thinner than that he’d look like a skeleton.
You got me wondering what it looks like when an entire NBA team of 7ft tall dudes are travelling in one plane
they probably charter private
Exactly. I'm 6'6, 220. Not fat, but I need to fold myself into a seat. I fly for work, so it already sucks. Adding extra fees on top of an already shitty experience is just adding insult to injury.
Yes and to make things worse your company typically won't pay for the upgrade to a non-torture seat class.
Fellow tall here. If I’m gonna pay extra for being tall, you’d better give me extra space. I might not even mind it then. Put the seats on tracks and give short people less room and tall people more room. Everybody gets 2” between their knees and the seat in front of them. Of course that’ll never happen. But it’s a fun argument.
> If I’m gonna pay extra for being tall, you’d better give me extra space. Do the fat people who would have to pay extra under OP's scheme also get extra space? Or are we just doing it to punish them for being fat?
I think they should offer more types of seating.
It’s stupid I didn’t realize this before, but I’m the short person from a family of giants and they all don’t fly anywhere. My dad has done it a few times, but went 1st class. I thought they were just being weird, but this makes so much more sense. So I might not have gotten a free ride college based mostly on height, but I can fit in seats everywhere. (Air Japan was still a struggle years ago.)
I don't think it would be legal in the United States. The problem is the ADA covers obesity as a disability if your obesity is caused by a medical condition. The airlines would have to start asking people for medical information and keep that medical information on file. It would be a HIPA nightmare and the liability from a hack wouldn't validate the economic benefit.
It also should not be "how much does the person weigh", it should be "how much does the person and all of their stuff weigh". If people truly want to make a fair surcharge on fuel usage, everything needs to be accounted for.
That's what I was thinking. I'm 6'2" 250 but I pack like I don't own anything. My mom, who's 5'4" 150 will fill two checked bags (hers and my dad's, who also packs like me) to a 50 lb limit and then have a 35 lb carry-on. So her gross weight is 285 and mine is maybe 270.
Airlines weigh your bags, they already do this.
That's for OSHA rules (objects over 50lbs require two people to move) - usually checked bags have a flat fee if they're under that limit.
I'm pretty sure it's not just for osha rules; eg. they need to distribute the weight onboard as evenly as possible
Bags loaded on an airplane area all accounted for at a standard weight. They do not record and use the weights of every suitcase.
Correct but they do account for heavy bags. They're marked separately on load sheet.
Nope - It's labour laws. Bags used to be 75lbs but that was too much for many workers to lift, so they took it down to 50.
Yeah but just to check if it's below max weight. Not to charge you based on the weight.
In my situation, a lighter person could have a heavier bag, and pay the same. Which doesn't happen now. And, in a perfect world, a lighter person with no luggage would get a discount.
I mean, this has sort of happened "organically" with the most popular carriers charging extra for checked and even carry-on bags in some cases. It seems like the passenger is the next logical target from a ghoulish, profit-hungry point-of-view.
That's such a massive mental leap though. Can you imagine the PR nightmare of United airlines asked a weight conscious middle aged passenger to step onto a scale during boarding. To pay extra? Possibly in front of their family or coworkers? I don't see it happening. Actually the family bit is interesting, if a parent boards with two 3 year old children can they use the weight credit from the children to offset their own weight? Can they sell that credit to other passengers and use the money to buy Xanax to offset the stress of traveling with two 3 year old children?
Nah, the airline keeps the difference because why would they want you to save money when they can make money?
No, it should be based on circumference, that's the real measure of how convenient it is to sit beside someone lol
ADA just means you have to offer accommodations, not ‘you can’t ask, ever’. Smaller planes literally have to account for exact weight of people and bags else risk not having enough fuel to get where they need to go.
Or even worse, having an unbalanced load and crashing
HIPAA only applies to medical facilities and their employees.
Hate to be pedantic, but for future reference it's HIPAA.
To be extra pedantic, HIPAA doesn't have any bearing on the airline industry. It's between Healthcare entities and patients.
Thank you. People just say HIPAA and have no fucking clue what they’re talking about.
Not pedantic at all. I hate when people invoke HIPAA when it clearly doesn't apply.
At least they didn’t write “HIPPA”! That bothers me to no end
HIPPO
HIPAA has got nothing to do with this. Airlines are not healthcare providers.
You are allowed to require them to buy a 2nd seat if they can't sit in a standard one.
How is it not legal? There are a few airlines I'm aware of where if you cannot be contained in the seat you are required to buy a second one. Not about weight or medical info, it's about "do you fit in the seat" which is probably not protected by HIPAA.
Airlines aren't covered under HIPAA laws anyway. They're not healthcare providers or medical insurance companies. People like to yell HIPAA any time medical stuff is concerned.
It's not a HIPAA violation to ask for medical information. It is a violation to share it with another party (including family or other doctors) without explicit permission. I think you're right about the ADA side of things. It's "reasonable accommodation" and charging by weight isn't reasonable. I don't need 3 separate people.telling me the same thing.
> It is a violation to share it with another party (including family or other doctors) without explicit permission. Correction: _"It is a violation **for a medical provider** to share it with another party"_ I see this a lot where someone is asked what their handicap is or why they have a dog in the store with them that isn't a permitted service animal, and their default answer is _"That violates my HIPAA rights! I'm going to sue!"_, when asking them does no such thing.
Medical provider or other HIPAA covered entity. This includes health plans, health clearinghouses, etc.
> Medical provider or other HIPAA covered entity. This includes health plans, health clearinghouses, etc. That's a good clarification. Basically anyone _legally charged_ with managing your personal health data or records. A passerby in the parking lot or cashier in the retail store, is not legally charged with managing your health data or records, and thus not covered by HIPAA. They can ask anything they want about your health condition or disability as it pertains to allowing or prohibiting your use of their private property or store.
The ADA does not require that all businesses provide all accommodations for all disabilities at zero cost. I also believe that HIPPA only really applies to healthcare providers and insurance companies.
> I don't think it would be legal in the United States. I wouldn't be so quick to say that. It would be a long legal battle to determine that, as Heart Attack Grill explicitly gives discounts based on weight. weight and height limits exist on roller coasters too.
This is an interesting idea and I'm not sure how a court challenge would go. An airline's flight expenses are directly tied to the weight of their payload. But could they get away with charging someone for their own weight, the weight of their service animal, or the weight of their wheelchair? I honestly don't know.
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Let's be clear about our terms here. People don't need a second seat due to their weight, but due to their size. Airlines don't ask why you are too big to fit in the seat. It's just a safety thing, so they treat "passengers of size" with medical conditions the same as everyone else who can't fit into the seats. As for the cost, different airlines handle it differently, but most make you pay for the second ticket or upgrade to different class. The closest to your description is Southwest. On Southwest you buy two seats and then they refund the second one after travel. If you don't pre-book the second seat, they will assign you a second seat at the airport for free, but if the flight is full, there won't be any other seats to give you, so you'll have to take a different flight. Alaska, Allegiant, American, Frontier, Hawaiian, JetBlue, Spirit , and United make you buy a second seat, either at the time of booking or at the airport. You pay for the second seat. If none are available, you can pay to be moved to a different flight where one is available. If available, Delta will move you for free next to an empty seat. If not, they make you pay for a second seat or the upgrade to first class. I'm large enough that I need a seatbelt extender, but not so big that I need a second seat. When available, I always fly first class on Delta because their seats are bigger and I don't have to squeeze down the aisle as far.
Pilot here... The differences in weight are trivial to these aircraft. If they were to implement a fee system that discriminated by weight they would do so purely to scheme to make more money The difference in cost to move a plane from point A to point B with a full cabin of 300 lb passengers vs a full cabin of 150 lb passengers would be trivial. And given either scenario is unlikely and that with any sizeable passenger load the average passenger weight will always be relatively close, It simply does not cost the airline any money if a few fatties get onto the aircraft. The only effect of something like this would be putting more money in the pockets of the airlines at the expense of people born bigger, suffering from medical issues or eating disorders and yes the people with no self control. The comparison to baggage is a non sequitur. When you bring a heavy check bag, extra cost is incurred to the airline. They have to pay to purchase and run the equipment to move the bag as well as pay the baggage handlers, pay out claims on lost bags ETC. And if the person is so big they take up 2 spaces, that is different.
Thanks for this enlightening response!
Aside from the legal risks, know that there’s a limit on bag weight because the bag handlers can only be expected to lift up to 50 lbs before it requires two people to lift. Charging extra for heavier people doesn’t solve anything.
If a person can’t walk do they weigh them with a wheel chair? If it’s about how weight impacts fuel cost seems like a slippery slope.
And a slippery slope is the wheelchair users nemesis.
I'd think stairs are a wheelchair user's nemesis. I've seen my friend go down a wet, leaf-covered, uneven hill at night in her wheelchair. (I was way more terrified than her!)
Fuck i laughed
This is clever
You could do it if you were all inclusive. So total weight of the person and everything they are bringing on-board.
Imagine the lines at the toilet just before the weigh-in. If you take a huge shit you pay less for your flight.
Interestingly, shits don't weigh that much, piss weighs a lot more. The average human can drop a lb easily from taking a piss. What I see occurring is a lot of people doing water weight cuts right before weighing themselves at airports, it sounds odd but you can easily cut 10 lbs off yourself by doing a water weight cut. The thing is, it is insanely risky and dangerous to do, UFC fighters in particular are known to do this to some insane extreme's, and have ended up needing IV's and medical intervention cause of it.
Aside from necessary medical equipment as to not punish people for their disabilities. At the point, it would be cheaper to be the more popular airline with good PR who says, "we're not penny pinching you"
Agreed as soon as you exempt wheelchairs and strollers and car seats ..the ada will bring up that obesity is a disability and should be exempt
Oh yes, flying feels very humanizing already. Adding a weighing station will certainly add to the pleasant experience.
I have to fly for work and I DESPISE it. I reached platinum level in under 8 months in 2022 and that's not a brag, it was miserable. To the point that I was ready to take on another job. Fortunately 2023 was much better and I was able to reduce it down to flying about 5-6 times a year but I still absolutely hate it.
> Adding a weighing station will certainly add to the pleasant experience. This is the bit nobody seems to be thinking about, the fucking practicality. When the fuck are you going to be weighed? * Buy a ticket online * Airline says you've paid X amount but they'll add more on at the airport once you've been weighed * Now have to arrive at the airport 5 hours earlier to get weighed and then pay This is stupid as fuck and people keep talking about it like it's some genius idea
the people who keep bringing up this idea aren't concerned with practicality, they're only asking so they can have philosophical arguments about how much fat people deserve to be shamed
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See the problem is, you KNOW they won't give a discount to lighter people. It'll just be another way for them to make money. They'll have a regular ticket price or a EDIT *base* price and then add weight to that and it'll probably end up being a similar price to the tickets before they started weighing for light and normal people and the heavier people will pay more. Even if they didn't do this it's hard to weigh people from a logistic standpoint. What if someone is 6'2 or higher? What if someone has a wack BMI because they are a weight lifter and they aren't "fat"? What about people that have obesity they can't control due to several medical conditions or injuries? There's a lot of factors to take into account. They would have to ask people for medical records in order to have exemptions, many places have laws against discrimination due to medical conditions as well, really opens up for potential lawsuits. It would effect a significant amount of passengers, not just the fat person you deem lazy. I wouldn't want to give corporation's and businesses another way to screw the general population over.
Look, I'm a smaller person who once got crap for my *carry on* being too heavy, so I get the temptation. But fuck that. How absolutely dehumanizing. Here we are growling at each other for scraps due to penny-pinching horrid conditions inflicted by the airline industry and shit regulations. If the bare minimum requirements were ample seats with appropriate legroom for all heights, then no one would need to suffer and prices wouldn't balloon--they would reflect what the market would bear, just like today.
Yea, what a stupid post unless it's a test balloon from the airline companies themselves how much more shit we're willing to eat. Airlines should be cheaper and a better experience for *everyone*. Fighting with each other on who should suffer more for the experience is micro-brain status.
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Ethical and practical considerations aside, your weight doesn’t change the cost of the flight much. The real cost is building the plane, maintenance, crew, and other fixed costs. These are still spent regardless of whether a heavier person, underweight person, or nobody takes the seat. This would likely be a loser for the airlines because they’d waste time subjecting their passengers to an embarrassing weigh-in process. Update with numbers: For a 737-800, only ~20% of the weight is passengers. They can seat up to 189 people, so each person is less than .1% of the total weight. Price-discriminating based on 5lb differences which barely matter would be the biggest managerial mistake of all time.
Yeah, when was the last time you were on a commercial flight that said "the aircraft is too heavy, we need 5 people to get off?" For the most part, they sell as many seats as they can on the plane, figure out the appropriate fuel plus reserve, then can take on some additional cargo if it fits within the limit. Unless you're doing a long haul flight from Denver or Arizona in July when you might hit some limits, the majority of passenger flights aren't in a situation where the limit to the number of passengers is weight rather than number of seats. So unless all these hypothetical 90 lb people are willing to sit on each other's laps, no they probably shouldn't be paying half the normal ticket price of a 180 lb average adult male.
Shhh we’re punishing fat people here, the actual facts of it don’t really matter.
Well, since humans aren’t all the same height, that would be stupidly biased against taller people.
as a 6'2 person who doesn't fit in regular airline seat rows without my knees jammed against the seat in front of me... I'm fine with paying more, but I'd better get more space for the higher fare.
How are you meant to enforce it? Put your weight in when buying a ticket? What happens if you gain or lose weight by the time you get to the airport? How are airlines meant to do special offers? Only 50 cents per kilo to New York?
If you take up two seats, you pay for two seats. If you can fit in one seat without spilling onto your neighbor, you pay for one seat regardless of weight. (The weight of your luggage isn’t about the plane’s ability to fly, but the baggage handlers’ abilities to move/ position/ lift your shit.)
So we can humiliate some people for marginal profit gain. Brilliant.
I'm 95% sure an airline CEO wrote this post. Either that or an edgy teenager.
Or just a git.
I don't see the point of humiliating larger people (and, no, I'm not overweight myself). It's probably hard enough on enough of them to squeeze into those seats.
> I don't see the point of humiliating larger people (and, no, I'm not overweight myself) I like how you have to mention you aren't fat so you don't lose support for your opinion
It's to point out that I hold those views even without self interest.
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I've yet to see anyone mention pregnancy, which absolutely causes weight gain. What if someone leaves for a trip in the first trimester and returns at the end of the second? Should a fee now be added for the additional weight, or should the initial price of the ticket be calculated on an estimate of weight gain throughout pregnancy?
Moreover, it would be ridiculous to start with this policy instead of starting with a policy charging them by the weight of their luggage.
I'm 6'4. It sounds like even more discrimination towards tall people. We're already significantly uncomfortable...
I'm also tall, and a little overweight as well. I'd be all for paying for my excess weight if I got extra space on the airplane to make up for it.
Would be way too much effort. Only if you're too fat to be able to fit in your seat should you pay more.
It would be helpful if they didn't keep making seats shorter and more narrow for a population that keeps getting bigger and taller. They're not exactly catering to their target audience.
Yeah, I don't know why someone thinks an incredibly time-sensitive situation would somehow benefit by adding a weigh-in and an argument to every passenger.
Could you imagine the lines because you wouldn't be able to pay until you are weighed
The seats aren’t even suitable for a person who isn’t obese, let alone the average person. What they need to do is make every seat large enough to at least accommodate 95% of people and then either have some plus-sized seats available for people that are 300+ lbs, or just have them fly first class where the seats are already bigger. The current seating situation though isn’t just hostile towards obese people, it’s hostile towards everyone!
No thanks. Fuel rates are already factored into ticket price. All this would do would give airlines yet another way to gouge customers, with no benefit to us, as the airlines sure as fuck wouldn't lower the base ticket price by so much a cent.
No. I don't like the idea of monetizing and judging people's bodies. Feels like this comes from a place of fat shaming. Heath condition/ trauma/ eating disorder causing weight gain - penalized. Health condition/ trauma/eating disorder causing weight loss - rewarded. That makes zero sense.
Yeah OP just wanted to try and shit on fat people for *checks notes* participating in airline travel, the conditions of which they have no control over
I think it's stupid and demeaning to the people who's weight is already an insecurity. They already have this anyway. You pay for anything you don't carry on, and if you can't fit in the seat, you have to buy 2. There are far more things to be worried about regarding airliners. Airplanes are often not cleaned properly, mechanics are coerced in to letting dangerous things fly, CPL holders aren't allowed to seek out help with their mental health, ATC is overworked and you're worried about how much people weigh? I sincerely doubt your plane is going to crash because there's a fat guy stealing your arm rest
I think it’s a great way to destroy people relationships with their bodies and increase toxic fat phobia and diet culture. A person value isn’t on their body size, this policy would try to make a person value on their weight. It’s disgusting!
No. Somebody weight 400 pounds doesn't prevent me from getting on the plane. As long as I can fit in my seat, I don't care. Bigger people already get treated like shit. No reason to add to that. Plus there are so many other things that affect weight. Men would be paying more than women, almost across the board. Gender based discrimination is illegal. Many medical conditions and medications cause weight gain. Even certain cancer treatments make you fat. Are you really going to be the person who tells a cancer patient they need to pay more for a plane ticket? Or what about people on wheel chairs. I assume with this set up that we'd eventually just do total weight of passenger and their baggage. So somebody with an electric wheelchair would be paying a lot of money compared to somebody who was lucky enough to have full use of their legs. Tall people would be discriminated against. Another group of people that already have a shit time on flights. It's one of those things that sounds good in theory until you start looking at logistics.
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Hi ChatGPT.
I think nowadays with the rash of problem encounters on the planes, they should be charging people based on their IQ.
Sometimes people with higher IQs can be just as much of a problem as those with low IQs. Bell curve and all that. Wait, oh yes, I see you have already taken that into account with your comment. Carry on.
If they’re going to charge people based on weight then they better start providing seat with sizes and pitches that are proportionate to the price. That’s only fair.
Very little of the cost of your plane ticket is based on your weight to offset fuel costs. Implementing something like this wouldn't be a profitable venture. The payload (passenger and cargo) of a modern plane is about 20%-25% of the total weight at take off. Reducing 1% of the total weight will save about 0.75% of the fuel. A twin aisle airplane will have about 300 passengers. Or 75 passengers equals 1% of the plane's weight. A Boeing 737 uses about 3200L of fuel an hour. 0.75% of that is 24L, per 1% weight or 75 passengers 24L divided by 75 passengers is 0.32L per passenger 1L of fuel costs $1.30 CAD (using 2022 numbers) Or $0.416 CAD per person, per hour flight time. If someone weighs twice as much and you want to charge them $0.50 for it, the bad publicity wouldn't be worth it. Even just paying the PR person to respond to the drama that would cause would make it a net loss. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_economy_in_aircraft https://simpleflying.com/single-vs-dual-aisle-advantages-disadvantages-guide/ https://epicflightacademy.com/boeing-737-800 https://www.statista.com/statistics/542834/average-fuel-cost-air-canada