Ultimately while the principle is good - and, as an overweight person, I'd have no problem paying more if it was done fairly - no airline would ever introduce this fairly. Once they've raised the price for fatter people, why, as a business, would they lower the price for thinner people to balance it out? Why not just take more profit?<p>Think back to when smoking was banned on most airlines, the airlines didn't think "great, now we can give our customers an even better service for the same price but without that smell that non-smokers hate", they thought "cool, now we can massively cut down on how much air circulation we do, meaning less in-plane oxygen, and keep more profit for ourselves".<p>-----<p><i>This debate may sound discriminatory, but in fact what economists term price discrimination - charging consumers who buy essentially the same product a different price - is a common feature in the modern market.</i><p>Surely the argument is that you aren't charging consumers differently for the same product, you're charging them differently for different products - the same way you pay more when shipping a heavier package through a courier firm or USPS/Royal Mail.
While the idea may make sense on paper, would this really save money?<p>To do this, airlines would have to weigh passengers before they fly and then charge them a surcharge based on what they weigh (say that everything up to 120 there is a flat fee and then you pay for every pound over).<p>Think about how much man power that would take. It would greatly slow down flying even more, unless of course airports got much bigger and had considerably more staff.<p>From the airlines' perspectives this doesn't make sense. It may make sense in the abstract if you're a smaller passenger, but would an airline really want to have hundreds of possible SKUs for each flight?<p>Asking someone who is big to pay for a second seat doesn't require a lot on an airlines part, but the idea of paying by how much you weigh would require a lot of additional resources.
It's not just about the relative costs of transporting overweight people. I am 180cm tall, and 70kgs in weight. On a non-stop flight between SF and London, I was sandwiched between two massively overweight men. I could not even eat a meal, and struggled to turn the pages of a book, since these two took up at least 30% of the space that should have been mine. I asked the stewardess to move me because it was so uncomfortable, but she claimed there were no free seats.<p>It's obvious that there need to be over-sized seats for over-sized people. I don't particularly care if they pay more or I pay less. Flying cattle-class is painful enough without being sandwiched between people who are much, much wider than the average person. It can't be comfortable for those fat people either to be crammed into a small seat. But at least they book flights knowing what they will endure (and they could book the more appropriately sized seats in business class). The rest of us don't have any determination in these events.<p>As for it being unenforceable, people get removed from planes for many reasons. I was recently on a plane where a man was removed from a 5 hour flight; he stank so badly that no-one could sit within 3 rows of him.
I'm 6'5", 275lbs. Fine, charge me more. But you better give me a seat that is reasonable for my body size. The width and leg room of coach seats today is completely absurd!<p>Part of the problem is that there is too big of a gap between coach and first. It's like having to choose between a Smart Car and an Escalade, when really all I need is a mid-priced sedan.
The main rationalization for this kind of policy seems to be "we already pay for heavier luggage, so why not for heavier people as well?"<p>In my opinion, overweight costs for luggage have nothing to do with "fair price", but all with "profit maximization" - airlines have to offer some luggage allowance (either by law or to make people actually fly), but they know that many people are careless and will cross the limit. Therefore, they can freely charge them without stirring up too negative feelings about greed. But that's exactly what it is - it has nothing to do with actual costs. Ryanair and EasyJet (though especially RyanAir) earn huge amounts of money this way.<p>Allowing them to charge heavier people would just inspire more greedy behaviour.
The article seems to miss one key point that would make implementing this much more complex. While we have some control over our BMI (weight to height ratio) we don't have control over our height.<p>I have two friends who are 5' tall and 6'5" tall. The 6'5" male, while still being quite fit, comes in at a solid 210-220 easy I'd guess, which would (under a 'weight only' policy) incur a surcharge for him. The 5'0" female has a little extra weight probably being about 130lbs. She's 90lbs less but more "obese" than the male.<p>Variations like this would make this type of policy very hard to implement in reality.
Interesting that they don't mention luggage, which if we're talking about weight is a significant factor.<p>For example, my wife weighs 105lbs but has been known to bring her weight in luggage (not kidding). I weigh 240lbs and usually bring a laptop and a couple changes of clothes in a small carry-on.<p>Only way to implement this (unimplementable in reality) idea would be to charge for the total weight being transported, passenger and luggage.
The example given in the article destroys any credibility this argument has. If you take a 500+ seat plane and increase every passengers weight by 20% it only costs an additional $472 for a trip from Sydney-Singapore-London. That's less than $1 per seat difference. What is the cost of tracking and weighing every passenger? Hard to see how there could be any gain from this.
No mention in the article about people who overflow their seats. I personally don't care whether the person beside me is 6'7" and 220lbs. But I do care if they're 5'0', 220lbs and half of their body is on my lap. Prices should rise with average customer weight for everyone across the board to make up for fuel costs, but when someone takes up two seats, they should pay extra for it.<p>But of course, I think seat sizes should increase with average customer width too, but we're still flying in planes that were manufactured in the skinny 70s. Increasing seat size would ensure that only the most ginormous would have to pay for an extra seat, rather than the 60% of the population that is overweight.
I've been saying this for awhile, not because of fuel prices but because of comfort. It is rude for an overweight person to spill into adjacent seats.<p>Just like it is rude for overweight people to drive up the cost of health care because they refuse to take care of their own bodies.<p>It's a touchy subject, but I think we have a lot to gain as a society by telling people it's not OK to be lazy and fat, instead of silently judging them. (Save yourself the "Some people can't help it!" argument. No one is buying that the 33.8% of obese Americans fall into that category - it's a choice for them.)
This is pretty unenforceable, but could work if you counted passenger weight as passenger + carry on baggage, and merely set a limit on that (above which you have to pay a surcharge). That way you're not inherently charging heavier people more, but rather limiting how much baggage they can take as a result.<p>By setting this limit appropriately, you could ensure you're never forcing anyone to pay extra (as long as they're not morbidly obese), as long as they take an appropriate amount of carry-on baggage.
There are many things that influence how much it costs to transport people or anything else-- including weather, how much taxiing is involved and the style of the pilot.<p>I am sure the airlines have taken this variability into account. No need to make ticket pricing even more elaborate than it already is.<p>If they start discounting for thin folks, then they'll be criticized if they adjust the ticket for bad weather conditions and/or lead-foot pilots as well.
This would be pretty much impossible for an existing airline to implement but what a great disruptive concept for a new discount airline startup. Your ticket is based on your total weight (body plus baggage) which means it would be totally attractive to anyone who is skinny and travels light (plus you're less likely to be squeezed in between two oversized seatmates). Sure you give up the heavy clientele but you gain a lock on an attractive slice of the market.
Many airlines have some type of policy in place for this. It is usually more about how big a passenger is, rather than pure weight (although the two are related). Of course, airlines, the bastions of customer service that they are, can't get it right...<p><a href="http://abcnews.go.com/WN/kevin-smith-fat-fly/story?id=9837268#.TzFTwMXPE8A" rel="nofollow">http://abcnews.go.com/WN/kevin-smith-fat-fly/story?id=983726...</a>
There's no reason to have a bunch of different prices. You just have a total weight allocation for each customer, and instead of just weighing your bags, they weigh you <i>and</i> your bags. If the combination is overweight, you pay excess just like you do now. (Ideally on a somewhat proportionate scale as opposed to the "oh you are 1lb over, that'll be $100" approach many airlines seem to use now.)
<i>Of course, while a weight surcharge may be a good idea in theory, it won't be easy to implement.</i><p>No, it won't be. Also, I'd guess that the weight of a passenger is small compared to the weight of plane required to add an extra seat to a plane.<p>All of which is to say I don't think this will start making sense until fuel prices go up by at least a factor of ten.
Ever wonder why your bag mysteriously didn't arrive your destination? Could be too many overweight people on board. It's cheaper to "forget" some baggage than to ask passengers to stay behind.
<i>below, I make a nuanced economic argument, sorry I don't have time to clean it up, believe me it's all economic.</i><p>Actually, from the point of view of the business, heavier people should pay more to fly if they also happen to have more cash and leftover demand when given cheaper tickets. Everyone should pay the very greatest dollar amount they are willing to, and if this function corresponds well with weight (why not, they can afford to eat more, and more of them are middle-aged professional than starving students, maybe?) - great.<p>Except for anyone whose point of greatest demand is actually still a loss, go ahead and charge everyone the most they'd pay. hell, make it fair, keep up the illusion that it's about weight, and if you don't have seats to fill, fill 'em at a loss with skinny people.<p>but maybe a better way to find a price discrimination curve woudl be to weigh wallets though for security reasons, or charge an extra fee for each (potentially-terrorist) credit card that a person flies with.