The part that I bolded is just not true. I booked flights to Hawaii* for me and my two children on Orbitz last December/January and was able to pick our exact seats on all legs of the trip.
- Yes, we had a wonderful time, thanks for asking.
It’s nice to be 5’8" and 150 pounds.
That was my first thought when I read the quoted part and almost asked why you couldn’t buy it on Orbitz. But you purchased a ticket for three people and (I’m sure) used three different names as the passenger names. I’m assuming the system would give an error if you selected the same name for two seats due to airline security requirements. I’m guessing but I’m sure someone will come along to confirm.
No, you bought three seats for three separate people. Those websites don’t offer a way to book two seats for one person - and the seat assignments you got at the time you booked your flight were NOT guaranteed. If necessary, the airlines would not have hesitated to split your group up, “reserved” seats be damned.
A fat person who wants to book two seats in order to accommodate his bulk has to have both seats entered under one name, and the airline has to put a note on the reservation indicating that the two seats MUST be adjacent. And the seats have to be booked in a row where the armrests lift up (so not a bulkhead row), and generally can’t be in an exit row. That can’t currently be done on any online booking site that I am aware of. It has to be done over the phone.
(A partial exception is Southwest - but only because they don’t have any assigned seating at all.)
I’m not sure why you’re so snarky. But here you go:
Southwest
And on and on. So it seems one just uses an alternate 2nd name.
did you mean carry on bags? Checked bags are weighed aren’t they?
I think the solution is to make seats wrap-around so the patron is protected from spillover and configure planes with different sized seats with proportional pricing.
You seem to be leaving out a very important part of that wiki cite.
Hee. A “Customer of size”. I feel special. 
I fly a lot. I use the armrest as the arbiter of whether or not the people seated next to me are encroaching on my space. If the armrest won’t go down because you’re too fat, I will ask the flight attendant to re-seat one of us (hint:you). This never used to be a problem, but the airlines are now much better at capacity planning, so there are rarely 2 open seats for those who might need them.
Also, seat belt extenders. If you need a seat belt extender, you should buy two seats.
I’m 6’4" and ~235lb, so I don’t have any extra room in my seating area for your flab.
Well that’s what I thought until I reread the first sentence: Heavier people on aircraft was a contributing factor on at least one crash.
It’s typical in aircraft accidents that it’s a combination of factors. In this case it was weight, center of gravity, and maintenance issues. Not sure if it was true on this flight but the maintenance manuals were wrong regarding tail rigging.
Had the pilots figured out the CG problem in time they could have ordered passengers to the front of the plane.
It’s this one: Air Midwest Flight 5481.
The criminally incompetent elevator maintenance was the prime contributing factor to that crash. The weight imbalance would not have caused the accident on its own.
The only issue I ever had was a really tall guy-probably 6’7" or so-not especially fat. He sat down, went to sleep, spread his legs out as far as they would go, commandeered both armrests and snored loudly the whole time. Miserable.
Right, that was my point. couger58 said “So in fact, over weight passengers can kill you.” and proceeded to only post the part of the wiki article that talked about the weight imbalance. I wanted to point out that heavier than average passengers were not the only cause of the accident.
not sure about criminally incompetent. There was a maintenance manual issue with conflicting information. I’ve run into this before on an engine assembly. Can’t remember how we resolved it. Probably called the manufacturer. You have to realize there’s a discrepancy between one part of a manual and another.
I would expect anything that is worked on to be flight tested. That was deliberately not done in this case. I’m a low time flyer of simple aircraft and I’ve seen all manner of improper assembly. Some of them coming directly from the manufacturer. It doesn’t take much to ruin your day in an airplane.
He/she stated up front that weight was a contributing factor. The plane was overweight and out of CG. That means if the rigging was the only problem they would not have crashed.
Bottom line comes down to the fact that Airlines make seats too small (to fit in as many people as possible) and plan for outdated and ludicrously low average weight figures.
Then they excuse it by throwing the word “average” around, as if that really means anything.
If we planned for ‘average’ database usage and bandwidth on my job and nothing more, we’d be completely fucked a significant percent of the time.
One flight full of businessmen (read: all adult males) on their way to a conference and those ‘average’ (17" width, 200 pounds including baggage) figures are dangerously inadequate.
Outdated and ludicrously low weight figures? If by that, you mean “people have gotten fatter”, yes. But I consider myself average height and weird and I only have a problem with seat sizes when people spill into mine.
I’m quite short and of normal weight, but have pretty broad shoulders - about 16" wide. EVERY time I fly I am next to someone whose shoulders are also wide, but since they’re usually taller, their shoulders are even wider and they end up mashing into me. I have not ever been seated next to someone who is so overweight that they impinge on my space, just the shoulder thing. I hate being pressed up against strangers.
Most of my long-haul flights are in and out of Seoul. It’s pretty hard to find a Korean that’s too big to fit into an airplane seat.
The flights we take within Europe are usually on smaller planes that have two seats next to the window instead of three seats, so we don’t have to worry about rubbing shoulders with strangers. I have taken a few flights on my own in the past few years, but I can’t remember ever being crowded by an obese neighbor. I am pretty small, though.
Honestly the problem I’ve run into most often is children sitting behind me and kicking my seat. Thankfully it’s never happened on long-haul flights. For some reason it only ever happens when we’re flying into the UK from another European country.
:dubious: How are 16" shoulders pretty broad? That sounds tiny. I am very slender and have never had trouble fitting in an airline seat (or any other type of narrow seat) and I just measured my own shoulders at 17".