I don’t think the airline is being unreasonable. They do offer the second seat free if the flight is not full. If someone needs a second seat but can’t afford it, they might have to choose to fly at a less busy time to ensure that there are empty seats. And that just doesn’t seem that unreasonable to me. Maybe I’m just an old fogey, but I don’t look at air travel as a right. It is an expensive method of getting from one place to another. People who cannot afford it find another way. My sister, for instance, used to take a 3-day bus ride home from college, because she could not afford to fly.
My husband is a big guy, too. “Football player gone to seed” describes him pretty well. He fits into the seat, just barely, but can’t lower the tray in most economy classes and he must sit with his shoulders twisted if he doesn’t want to encroach into his neighbor’s space.
We travelled across country a couple years ago with our 4 children to visit relatives. We did pay for a seat for our infant, but that was as much as we could do.We had to go economy. The seating was horrendously crowded. I’m only 5’7", albeit with long legs, and I was uncomfortable. It seems to me that the seating in economy class has shrunk to the point that it is acceptably uncomfortable to the average person. If it were actually reasonable, there would be very few large people who wouldn’t fit and this would rarely be an issue.
Tsubaki:- what about people who are simply big? I’m talking about guys who are around 6’5" and have pro-footballer type shoulders. Sure, their stomach and legs might not encroach onto your seat, but their shoulders may.
These people are far worse flight companions than fat people, IMHO (sorry, JohnB and stofsky). I’m a 5’4", 150# female and I have no trouble fitting into any airline seat (right side up or, when the row is empty and I feel the need for a few yoga inversions, upside down :)). I like to have my space to myself as much as anybody, but I realize we’re not all manufactured in uniform sizes so I don’t usually mind “donating” a little extra room to a neighbor.
But Lordy Lord, those “oxshoulders” and “stiltlegs” (well, if a fat person is a “wideass”, what are we going to call these folks?) get on my last nerve. I would much rather sit next to a fat person than to one of those poor guys who simply don’t have enough room for their wingspans or legspans. In the first place, fat is somewhat more compressible than muscle or bone, so the fat person’s body may butt up against mine but it’s not literally shoving me to one side, the way those shoulders and knees do. In the second place, it’s softer and somehow feels more impersonal and insulating, so I’m not so uncomfortable being butted up against it. In the third place, as JohnB’s confession so clearly illustrates, the big guys are not only uncomfortable to sit next to, they’re uncomfortable to sit in front of, because they don’t have enough legroom for you to recline. And they’re often uncomfortable to sit in back of too, because they have to keep fully reclined the whole flight just to get enough space to breathe!
I try not to get mad at them, because I know it’s not their fault, but they are definitely taking up more than their “allotted share” of space, just as the fat people are. So I say, if SWA is going to be charging for extra seats based on butt girth, they should charge based on shoulder width and thigh length too. If inconveniencing your neighbors in cramped airline seats is the basis for charging passengers extra fare, they should definitely be gunning for the linebackers.
For the record: I NEVER, EVER hit the recline button. I’ve never had the need to rest my head in the lap of a complete stranger seated behind me (no matter how cute or comfy they appeared).
Shoe companies should be required to make as many “unusual” sizes as they do more common sizes. I have a friend who is 6’11" and wears size 18 shoes. While I can go to Payless and get a pair of cheapo loafers for 15 bucks, he is stuck trying to find our local NBA teams outlet/second hand store. Because this is inconvenient and more expensive for him than the normal person the burden of correcting this should fall on the evil corporation that makes shoes only for the majority of people who wear them. Don’t they know that the minor expense of tooling up to manufacture thousands of pairs of giant cheap shoes that will never get sold or recoup the tooling expense it only fair. After all, we do live in a socialist state here where everyopne is guaranteed the right to pay the exact same price for goods and services as any other person. Don’t we?
Same thing goes for pants. I’m 6’1" and have a 32" waist and i can never find pants that fit me because there are too few slender folks out there. Well Levis should be sued to make sure that I always have pants the right size available for me.
Also I can eat more creme brule than most folks and still want more, but is it fair that I must pay for the two desserts it takes to fill me up, while some damned pixie can get fill for half the price? Not Fair!!!
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Seriously, all you Marxists need to pull that Nuk outta’ your mouth and get over it. Nobody ever told you life was fair who wasn’t either lying to themselves or you. Entropy defeats the concept of unilateral fair play. Get a helmet and truck on.
I am very uncomfortable with the way this discussion is going. I don’t care whether we consider large sized people disabled or not. Each person has a niche in the broad continuum of human sizes, and except for very unusual cases our society accomadated all these sizes.
But now it seems that since we are so weight conscious today, that we ascribe some moral dificiency to a natural condition that has been with us forever. In the past, most women following childbirth gained a wack of pounds, and were quite content. But following the sexual revolution it seems to me that many women decided to compete in a society that glorifies youth and sex. Those that don’t are now judged “overweight” and subject to some of the assinine comments I’ve read earlier in this thread.
And what about the men? My generation was much taller than my father’s, and the current crop of high school graduates are exhibiting quite a number of 6’ 6" plus citizens.
But I hear that economy class seats on the major airlines have significantly reduced in size since I flew extensively in the late seventies and eighties.
Design of occupied space at one time considered the statistical frequency of adult size, while ensuring inclusion for the vast majority. If we are to now accept marginalizing an increasing number of people, then we will be reverting to discriminatory practices which were acceptable for other reasons only a few decades ago.
I just read yesterday (In Laura Fraser’s book Losing It which is about fraud in the diet industry) that 3% of the population in the U.S is considered morbidly obese, and defined that as having a BMI of 35 and up.
For a woman of 5’8 that equates to 230 pounds. I weigh 70 pounds more than that, and can still wedge my ass in there without overflowing into the next cushion.
Based on that scientific calculation, I will unscientifically opine that we’re talking about 1-2% of the population. These are people who are bigger than me, but still not so big that they require a wheelchair (thereby qualifying as disabled and getting around the two seat restriction, I believe).
Most people who are that large don’t fly anyway. A lot of them don’t leave the house.
This rule isn’t going to change anything that currently happens in airplanes. A lot of of airlines have done this for a long time.
Thanks for the link slackergirl. Apparently SWA has addressed the retrofitting issue brought up by some posters…it doesn’t seem to be a cost effective option.
I think you’re making unwarranted assumptions, and reading too much into this discussion.
First of all, nobody said that there is a moral deficiency to being overweight. The question is merely whether airlines are justified in charging more for the grossly obese, which is a separate question altogether.
Second, its overly simplistic to describe obesity as a “natural” condition. In what sense is it natural? Most people are not inherently obese.
Third, what does it mena to say that fatness “has been with us forever”? Do you mean that obesity has existed since the dawn of time (a statement which appears to be unsubstantiated)? Or do you mean that overweight individulas have always been overweight? Even if those statements were demonstrably true – and they are not – what bearing does that have on the issue at hand?
Binarydrone–You make another bad analogy when comparing the airline seat thing to giving up your seat on the bus to a little old lady. In most cases, I’d hop right out of my seat to give it to the little old lady. But when I was 8 months pregnant, I would have let someone who was more able-bodied give up their seat. In other words, on the bus, I can choose whether or not to “share.” On the fully booked airplane, I have no choice. I am small enough that I have some wiggle room on a plane, so it is usually okay if I am seated next to a fairly large person. And if it was a short flight and/or I had no complications, I might well choose to donate part of my seat. But if I had to travel with my baby on my lap or I had to do important work on the plane or if it was a long flight, I wouldn’t choose to share. I’d want or need the whole seat that I paid for and that I was expecting to get. And if I was fatter than I am, I may well need the whole entire seat for my own bulk! I may not be able to share even if I wanted to.
In other words, you are assuming that the fat person will be seated next to people who are able to subsidize them. But their neigbors may not be able to, even if they wanted to.
On another note–even if they gave the second seat away for free, they are still in the position of judging whether a person is obese enough to need 2 seats or not.
According to the BMI charts, I am “obese.” But I don’t think anyone would look at me and think “obese.” I’m certainly overweight, but I am more than small enough to fit easily in an airline seat. But measure me, weigh me, and compare me to a chart, and I’m a gen-yoo-ine obese person. I’m 5’3" and 186 lbs, and I’m quite muscular, so I’m not quite as big as it may seem from the numbers.
So, lets say I called an airline and told them I needed a free second seat because I am obese. And the flight sold out and/or was overbooked. And I showed up with my not-very-big self…are they still going to let me have two seats? They still have to draw the line somewhere.
But as we all know, all screen actors are ridiculously petite – so much so that they build all their sets to 7/8 scale to make them look bigger. And besides, I only saw Pretty Woman on TV, and TV adds 10 pounds to your weight. **
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Since I didn’t see this answered…tracer, I wear size 7, which works out on my build to be a 28-29 inch waist in jeans. So figure about a 27 inch waist, I guess…it’s hard to compare equally between a women’s “size” and something that makes sense to men.
Speaking of celebs, why do all their heads look so dang big? Anybody else ever notice that?
Do airlines charge more for big heads? Hope not. (Tie-in to the OP. ;))
Now, somebody say something like “Only if their heads require…”.
Peace,
mangeorge
Defender of Weather Forcasters and the Liberal Mass Media.
What if the airlines offered “smaller” seats for, let’s say, 75 percent of the “regular” fare ? Assume these seats would be really cramped for anyone larger than a 32 inch waist, 15 inches per seat, seven wide on a normal 737. That way, if you could fit in one, you’d get a better fare and anyone that needed a wider adult seat could get it without having to pay more. I fly with my kids a lot and it makes no sense at all for a 6 year old to take up a full size seat. The airlines would get the same revenue per flight without discriminating against anyone.
See, the thing is, there are no free lunches. If you don’t want heavy people discriminated against, then the result will be for regular sized people to have to pay more money for a service they don’t need. So now THEY are the ones being discriminated against.
Try as you might, you can’t provide equal services for everyone in society. Some people will have to pay more, or the rest of us will have to. Someone has to pay for that fuel, and airlines as an industry are not profitable. So somewhere, somehow, someone is going to have to pay for the overweight people.
Sounds like frank common sense to me. But, on a more purist/sacrastic note…questions that counter the logic:
Why did gov’t regulators made sure every new TV comes equipped w/closed captioning? Why isn’t an add-on option for the hearing impaired?
Is the reason drive thru ATM’s have braille on them because only 1 company makes only 1 style keypad for all machines throughout the country?
Why didn’t Microsoft bundle windows accesibility options as a seperate stand alone product so all the normal people didnt have to absorb the cost of development?
Wouldn’t McDonalds make more $ if they dropped the price of a Big Mac and charged children $1 to use the play place?
