I finally got back to the thread. Please forgive the lateness of my reply. In inches, my behind takes up 15-16" in a seat.
From the Southwest website:
“If we were to replace just three rows of three seats with two seats, each being one and a half times wider, we would have to double our fares to maintain our profit margin”
O.K., maybe I’m not the greatest at math, but that makes no sense to me. If they take 3 rows of 3 seats (9 seats), and replace them with 3 rows of 2 seats (6 seats), then they are losing 3 seats. Let’s say they charge $100 per seat - that’s a loss of $300. That would be recouped by charging only 50% more ($150), and they would only have to raise the fare for the 6 larger-sized seats, not for the entire plane. Am I missing something?
I would also like to point out that, if you are an environmentalist, you should be dead-set against wider seats. The airplane burns as much fuel with 200 thin people as 150 fat ones.
For example, I recently did the match and discovered that flying first-class costs an extra 66 gallons of gas on a cross-country flight as opposed to flying coach. That amount of gas would require 6000 miles of driving in an SUV vs a typical sedan. So widening all the seats to give larger people the benefit would be very expensive environmentally.
It would also mean that the airlines would have to buy and maintain more aircraft, and that the airspace around major airports would become even more congested, leading to more delays, even more fuel costs, etc.
That, by the way, is why the airlines are saying tickets would be twice as much. Because if they have to have 50% more airplanes to fly the same number of people, the inefficiencies of extra maintenance, fuel, and flight delays have to be added on top of the number.
That’s assuming those seats sell out every time.
Why is that solution better than the status quo?
I didn’t say it was. You read more into my post than was there. Personally, I don’t think Southwest should make any of their seats bigger. They built their reputation on being a low-cost, no-frills airline, and that is their strength. Wider seats would be nice, but I prefer lower fares over wider seats. And as Sam Stone pointed out, it’s more efficient as well.
I’m simply questioning how Southwest could possible have to double their fares in order to make up for losing 3 seats per plane, as they claim on their website - PERIOD.
According to their website, Southwest owns 52 planes with 122 seats, and 312 planes with 137 seats, which is around an average of 135 seats per plane. They have about 2800 flights per day, which means approx. 378000 available seats per day. Removing 3 seats per plane would mean a loss of 8400 seats per day, which would require 63 extra flights, slightly more than a 2% increase. Each plane averages 8 flights per day, which would mean they might need to purchase 8 additional aircraft (they currently operate 364), also a little over 2% increase.
But they claim they would have to double their fares to maintain their profit margin? I’d like to see their math on that one.
Even if they were talking about removing 6 seats per plane (maybe they meant BOTH SIDES of 3 rows) would lose 16800 seats per day, or 125 extra flights per day (slightly over 4% increase), or 21 new planes, or a little under a 6% increase in the fleet.
I realize that this is grossly oversimplified, since they don’t sell out every flight, and I did some averaging, and there are many other expenses, and I probably did the math wrong:D , but c’mon - would they really have to DOUBLE the fares?
I think the airlines show put in a row or two of “fat people” seats. Perhaps 33% larger then the regular seats and charge 33% more for those seats.
This way when I make my booking I can tell them I am a HUGE person (which I’m not) and I need the Super-sized seat.
Then I get a nice roomy seat for less then the first class seats. 
Question for those ( lee , SisterCoyote , honey, Binarydrone) who described SWA’s restated policy as either bigoted, discriminatory, embarrasing or immoral:
Are casket manufacturers being (for lack of a better term) unfair when they charge $1,199 to $1,399 for a standard width 20 gauge casket versus $2,395 for the extra wide 33" model?
Being dead, the deceased wouldn’t be embarrassed by the price policy, but it may cause the surviving family members an undue financial burden…especially when they find out the cemetary is going to charge them for 2 plots.
If the airline is gonna charge me for 2 seats, they better give me 2 meals, I’ll tell you what!
I’m inclined to agree that an airline is not selling ‘a seat.’ They are selling a ticket to transport one person from Cleveland to Bermuda (oh, if only it were me…).
I also think that all the research I’ve seen indicates that dieting simply does not work. It is not only, for most people, useless for losing weight, it is also bad for actual health. So all the people here who are saying ‘it’s fat peoples’ own fault that they’re fat- if they’d just exercise and eat right, they wouldn’t be fat’ are probably blessed with bodies that aren’t meant to be all that big. How nice for them.
And of course, since Southwest uses an open seating plan, they can require you to buy two seats… but they cannot guarantee that those two seats will be next to each other.
>> dieting simply does not work
Sorry, you cannot burn more calories than you ingest and not lose weight. No exceptions. If you are gaining weight you are eating more than you burn. See this thread
That’s true, sailor, but you can injest more calories than you burn and lose weight. If fact everybody does to some extent.
Some people do metabolize more of the calories they injest than do others. That’s (partly) why there slim people who eat like a horse, never exercise, and still never gain weight. My ex father-in-law for example. He didn’t gain weight till he got old.
But you’re right, the body can’t make fat out of thin air.
Peace,
mangeorge
The thing that annoys me is that if SWA wants larger people to buy two seats, why not give them the second seat’s frequent flyer miles? And, if the person wants it, extra meals? I mean, if someone buys two seats beforehand, wouldn’t they be able to get the frequent flyer miles for both seats? It’s just the fatties that can’t actually get a perk that they are PAYING (being forced to pay) for?
This is what gripes my ass, big time. It smells of “cheap bastards”.
And I also agree, seat sizes are different in each airplane. I’ve always managed to fit into my seat (even at my fattest—which I am not at right now) but some seats are a tighter squeeze than others. This does not compute. How are the people who are “marginal” (may fit into some seats, may not fit into others) have any idea what to anticipate? And even if they always have been able to fit into their seats, how do they know that they won’t happen to stumble upon a super-tiny seated plane in the future? Some consistency would be appreciated.
I’d like to point out that SWA doesn’t serve meals, only kibbles-n-bits. And from what I’ve seen, you can have all the extra kibbles you want, even if you only buy one seat.
What angers me is that Southwest seemingly wants to play it both ways. They claim they’re selling seats, not carriage - fine. In that case, anyone who uses more than one seat should have to pay for more than one seat, I have no problem with that. But if that is the case, the person who buys two seats should also get twice the carry-on allowance, twice the baggage allowance, twice the frequent flier miles, two meals - twice as much of everything that goes with a seat. Is Southwest doing this? No - when it comes to those things, suddenly the claim is that they’re really selling carriage. Fish or cut bait, Southwest - you can’t have it both ways. I’ll be damned if I’ll go along with their current approach, which is basically “we’re doing whatever is convenient for us.” Either sell seats, or sell carriage - you can’t sell only the best (for the airline) aspects of each, and expect people not to become indignant.
Exactly - people who weigh 500 pounds already know they’re going to have to purchase two seats. The people who are really going to be hurt by this policy are the ones who weigh 250 lbs - just because they’ve flown on other airlines with no problems doesn’t mean that they will necessarily fit into the seats on Southwest, so they have no way to know in advance how much their travel is going to cost them. And what happens if the flight is full, and Southwest says they need to buy a second seat? They’re going to have to reschedule their flight (and not just that Southwest flight, but alos any connections they might have to make, including ones on other airlines).
Sounds like a good reason to avoid Southwest Airlines to me.
Wow! Did that ever set off my bullshit alarm! Are we to believe that somehow by losing three seats per plane all of the passengers will have to pay double what their fare would have been? Perhaps someone more mathematically gifted than I can show us how that can be.
I believe the baggage limits are set by the FAA on a per-customer basis. Notice how the limits went down after 9/11 for every airline, I don’t think they all decided to change their baggage policies independently.
And as mentioned above, if you want to get double meals on Southwest, you’ll have to convince them to give out single meals first.
Well, according to last night’s news, Southwest Airlines finally got its first test case. Two rather robust young ladies were both told they had to get two seats each.
I figured, since they were friends flying together, why couldn’t SWA just sell both of 'em three seats total, and let them split the center seat between them? They were fat, sure, but they weren’t Robert Earl Hughes fat.
Because ‘profit’ and ‘profit margin’ are different things. The profit margin is the profit expressed as a percentage of revenue. The statement from Southwest Airlines is therefore absolutely correct. Whether it is also deliberately misleading is a separate issue, although, in fairness to them, the profit margins will be what matter to their investors.
Well, APB, I’ll take your word for it, but I’d still like to see how such a thing would work mathematically even if we are talking about profit margins.
Which to me strongly implies that, regardless of what Southwest may claim they are selling, the FAA regards their service as selling carriage, not merely seats. Which makes it hard to justify discriminating against heavy passengers unless they are literally too large to fit into one seat (ie, 600 pounds) - and that only for safety reasons. If the airline is selling carriage, then the plane is in fact similar to a bus or a subway - transport from point A to point B is all that’s guarenteed, not comfort, and the fact that a larger person is spilling over the seat by an inch or two is irrelevant. The passenger is not guarenteed a fixed amount of space, any more than they are guarenteed not to have to sit next to a person with bad body odor, or an overly talkative person, or an obnoxious child, or behind a person who fully reclines his seat, etc - sitting next to a larger person and risking being somewhat “squished” is part of the risk of using public transportation that is selling carriage instead of space.
And most of the problem could be avoided simply by slightly increasing the seat width in the first place. Yes, it will mean that ticket prices will go up some - but I really have little sympathy for people who whine about how terrible it is to be squeezed between two large people on a flight, and yet complain about any measure that might increase general ticket prices. Comfort and lowest price airline tickets are to a degree mutually exclusive - and if rock-bottom airline fares are what most people deem crucial, then the price will be flying on fully loaded planes with miniature seats, because that’s the only way the airline will be able to make money. Me, I’d rather pay a little more in fare in exchange for a reasonable seat size in coach class.