Should airlines be required to offer obese passengers another seat or two at no extra charge?

[Broomstick]

@ParallelLines

It’s not an ideal situation, but it reflects the costs fliers are willing to bear with. Honestly, with the needs for additional security, the fight over baggage sizes and costs, and the predatory pricing schemes (for the luggage, etc), I’ve pretty much ruled out flying for anything that I could drive in a day. And that leaves out the equally predatory costs of renting a vehicle, about which we’ve had various threads.

Personally, I’ve been riding Amtrak for my long distance trips. Doesn’t work for every destination but I encourage people to try it.

Makes me long for the days before airlines were de-regulated. Sure, flying cost more but it was a hell of a lot more comfortable.

Yes, let’s mandate larger minimum seats. So what if it costs more? It will be healthier and less stressful. Maybe with that we’d have fewer episodes of people acting out. Flying costs more? Cry me a river, you get what you pay for. Everyone is complaining about how horrible flying is but no one wants to actually impose a real solution. And I say that as someone who has always flown commercial on a tight budget and who does not have a lot of money for travel.

Back to topic - look, I’m sorry it’s uncomfortable to be obese and fly, but airlines can’t afford to give away space given their current business models. (Frankly, I’m not entirely sure current business models for airlines are actually sustainable long term). Extra-tall people have to buy upgrades. Extra-wide people do, too.

@Tride

How? This is a generic product they are offering–a seat. You either fit in that space or you don’t, toddler to adult.

One problem is that the seats are getting so small that even small adults (short and thin) are having problems fitting into the seat.

@LSLGuy

Essentially this is trying to turn cramped cabins into a safety issue that properly falls under FAA, rather than a consumer protection issue that properly falls under a different and much less powerful department of DOT or the unrelated FTC’s consumer protection watchdog folks. It’s not batshit insane to recognize the safety implications of cramped conditions are non-zero, but that’s not the real motivation here.

I’m 5’3" tall and I barely fit into an economy seat last time I flew commercial - and that was over 20 years ago now, I hear they’ve gotten even smaller. My knees were knockin’ the seat back in front of me and I could barely move the entire flight. Yes, I think there’s a safety issue there. There’s the obvious difficulty of even getting into or out of such a confined space, but the “can barely move” part contributes to things like DVT/blood clots. I think the crowding contributes to some of the bad behavior and acting out because such confined spaces are very stressful.

@Omar_Little

There are many scholarly articles written arguing the constitutional right under Article 14 to travel, including air travel. Some have even argued that it is a basic human right under UN declarations.

No one is being denied a right to travel if airlines raise their prices. There are other options: cars, buses, trains. You arguably have even more right to food and shelter but with few exceptions no one is getting those for free.

@Sam_Stone

Won’t anyone think of global warming? Advocating for more leg room and bigger seats is equivalent to advocating for more CO2 per passenger mile in aircraft, which are already large CO2 emitters. For that matter, we should be eliminating first class seating, which has a much larger per-seat CO2 budget than economy. It’s a surprisingly large amount.

I think if airline seats were made humane (because the current economy variety sure aren’t) the prices would rise sufficiently that there would be fewer people going by air. It might result in no greater CO2 overall than at present. Maybe even less.

I also think we should start putting as much money and support into alternatives to airplanes as we currently do into flying (and keep in mind, I’m a pilot - I’m not inherently anti-aviation). More options are a good thing, and a lot of those options are better for the environment than flying is.

@cincinnatus

I’ve always been puzzled why air carriers do not set fares with passenger weight somehow calculated heavily in the result. Weight is the key to a successful flight, right?

In the early days of flight they actually insisted on weighing each passenger along with their luggage. Of course, airplanes were a lot smaller back then, and the smaller the airplane the more critical passenger weight is.

Modern airliners are so huge that the weight of the passengers can be averaged out, and a passenger getting out of their seat and walking around the airplane does not require the pilots to compensate for the weight-and-balance changes.

But due to cultural reasons there was a LOT of consternation about weighing passengers back in the day, especially women. These days it would cause a lot of yellin’ and screamin’

@Thudlow_Boink

I’m not sure what I think about the proposal, but it does make a certain amount of sense if we think of obesity as a disability. There are plenty of other situations where we don’t make the disabled person bear the cost of their accommodations.

There are also plenty of instances where we DO make the disabled pay the extra costs of being disabled. Hell, there are extra costs imposed by being female that are just now being acknowledged.