Isn’t this the same like discrimination on the basis of gender or race? In fact I find it difficult to understand why airlines would want to charge passengers more because they weigh more than the typical person of their height and age. It seems airlines want to make more money at every opportunity they can get.
Who is going to protect air travellers?
I was reading an article in Forbes, the author cites government statistics which says that “the average weight of an American has increased 24 pounds since 1960.”
According to the author’s calculation, “Airlines flew 735 million passengers last year, multiply that by 24 pounds and airlines are flying 17.6 billion pounds of extra weight around. It takes roughly a gallon of jet fuel to move 100 pounds on a domestic flight, that means 176.4 million gallons of fuel, costing $538 million (at an industry average price of $3.05 a gallon)
Whatever their reasoning, should air passengers pay more on the basis of their weight? Or is it that airlines are just greedy and would want to make more money at every opportunity available.
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I definitely think any person that requires the space of two seats should have to pay for two seats.
I agree with you Debo, if you take space of two seats you have to pay…but what I don’t get is paying more because of your weight on one seat on the plane.
Well, if I have to pay for extra bags and for overweight bags then and a person they weighs more than the average person should also have to pay for their extra weight.
I’m not a skinny minny, but if I were extremely obese I would expect to have to pay more because my extra weight causes the plane to be heavier thereby requireing more fuel to operate the plane.
It should be a weight in as you check in, don’t just look at a person and say you are fat that wil lbe an extra $200 bucks or whatever but we should all perhaps weigh in like our luggage is and pay up if we are over the standard weight.
Thanks Debo for your comments…..I was thinking of it as a moral issue, should we discriminate people based on their weight? But After looking at the business side of things, I guess it makes sense for people to pay more based on their weight.
It’s that morals dilema in business again!
I better start looking after my figure to avoid being caught up in this weight dilema.