Man sues airline for having to sit next to obese passengers

[Ventanni]

Lots and lots of things going on here:

1. I seriously doubt the man incurred $100,000.00 worth of injuries because he sat next to a fat person. On that long of a flight, no one is just going to "allow" themselves to be injured that way.
2. Weight most definitely increases fuel usage, but fuel costs are a relatively small portion of the overall flight cost. Any measure that increases the price of your ticket relative to your body weight is going to be picked apart by anyone breaking down the cost of your ticket. The measure would be seen an unnecessarily "personal" and would never fly (no pun intended).
3. The much bigger issue here is why do people get morbidly obese? I've known and loved many obese people, but at the heart of every single one I've met, food is use as a coping mechanism for either pain or everyday life. Either they've learned this on their own, or they've learned it from others as a way to deal with everyday life. So while we can enact measures to charge fat people more for plane tickets, I think we'd be doing society a lot more good by addressing the real problem at hand. Food, like alcohol, is not the way to deal with pain. 🙁

Edit - I had to revise my statement in #3.

 

[Ruptga]

2. Weight most definitely increases fuel usage, but fuel costs are a relatively small portion of the overall flight cost. Any measure that increases the price of your ticket relative to your body weight is going to be picked apart by anyone breaking down the cost of your ticket. The measure would be seen an unnecessarily "personal" and would never fly (no pun intended).

I don't consider a quarter to be a relatively small portion, but that's subjective and I have seen different numbers for fuel costs. Either way, the point isn't to punish people for being fat, it's to cover the additional costs of moving mass be it luggage or passengers. Paying for overweight bags but not overweight people is stupid, either there should be a fee for both or a fee for none.

 

[GagHalfrunt]

Either way, the point isn't to punish people for being fat, it's to cover the additional costs of moving mass be it luggage or passengers.

It doesn't matter what the point is, it matters how it looks. We've seen what the court of public opinion can do, look how quickly United bent over and spread 'em for the beat up doctor. Of course it makes sense to charge overweight passengers more, on a purely intellectual level fat passengers cost more, should pay more and everyone knows it. But that doesn't mean jack. This country is too freaking fat and you can't get painted as anti-chubbo. If you do the intellectual side that says fatties should pay more is going to get buried by the screaming masses of hungry hungry hippos. Next thing you know it becomes a cause celibre and fat is covered as a disability. The airlines will be forced to provide fork lifts and extra-wide doors to get them into the plane where they'll pay regular price to spill over into three seats.