United Airlines "Too Fat To Fly" Policy

[General Zod]

Well, strictly speaking yes, I do. But seriously - ask questions

1. Are you in your seat? Yes.
2. Are you also in that other seat next to you? Yes.
3. Did you pay for the seat next to you? No.


Pay up.

And I don't necessarily have a problem with them paying up, as long as the airline is up front about it. A hidden last minute charge that a customer might not even know skirts honest business practices far too closely for my comfort, and is all too easy for an airline to sneak in. Especially if the airline has any discretion about what they consider "too fat".

[Flagg]

The real question is are they still selling the adjacent seats? Because if they are then it is wrong to charge fatties extra.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

I wouldn't be surprised this is all inside that additional terms and conditions attached to every ticket. It's just that nobody bothers to download it and take a look at it.

[SCRawl]

There is another possibility, though I doubt it would ever be adopted: use different size seats. A little Googling has revealed that the "standard" airline seat is 17.2" wide, but there are airline seats available on various airlines (and for some first class passengers) at a little over 20", with a few widths in between. I could conceive of a plane that has, say, 70% @ 17.2", 20% @ 18.5", 10% @ 20", with higher costs as widths go up. Perhaps even an "unhealthily skinny" seat at, say, 14", for the budget-conscious traveller who prefers to take his food through an IV.

They already have different sized seats. They call the larger ones "Business Class" and "First Class". Pretty much every plane I've been on has at least a couple of rows of them in the front of the plane.

I've heard of these things. I've been on...counting on fingers...ten flights in my life, and of those only three had a separate section for the business/first classes. I recognize that this may be the exception rather than the norm. In any case, the availability of those seats isn't really the issue. It is well understood that an extra-wide passenger may be accommodated in an extra-wide seat, and that these seats are usually available in first/business class. The problem is that those seats are prohibitively expensive, often more than double the cost of an economy seat (which is the remedy proposed in the OP). They also come with enhanced services, which accounts for some of the additional cost, but might not be in the budget of an ordinary traveller.

I doubt it's really worth it to have smaller seats than current economy class seats. You can fit a skinny person in a normal sized seat, but you can't fit a normal person in a skinny-sized seat. Including seats specifically for smaller people wouldn't do anything other than reduce the availability of airline seats for people with an average build.

Yeah, that last line was just a wisecrack. I should have indicated so with the appropriate smiley.

[General Zod]

They also come with enhanced services, which accounts for some of the additional cost, but might not be in the budget of an ordinary traveller.

We're talking a price gap of several hundred to thousands of dollars. Which isn't really an option for most people, especially if their flight is for emergency/urgent reasons. (The benefits of flying a first class domestic flight are dubious at best unless you're a legitimate business traveler.)

[Simon_Jester]

I've heard of these things. I've been on...counting on fingers...ten flights in my life, and of those only three had a separate section for the business/first classes. I recognize that this may be the exception rather than the norm. In any case, the availability of those seats isn't really the issue. It is well understood that an extra-wide passenger may be accommodated in an extra-wide seat, and that these seats are usually available in first/business class. The problem is that those seats are prohibitively expensive, often more than double the cost of an economy seat (which is the remedy proposed in the OP). They also come with enhanced services, which accounts for some of the additional cost, but might not be in the budget of an ordinary traveller.

As I pointed out, a big chunk of the extra cost just comes from the increased square footage per person in business class.

Suppose business class travelers get six inches more legroom (or, equivalently, more room to ease the seat back so they can sleep). That increases the length of plane body taken up by each row by 20% or so. Now give them several more inches of room to spread out side to side... to the point where you can only fit four seats into a row on a standard 3-3 seat narrow-body jet like a Boeing 737 or Airbus 320 and still have a decent amount of space in the aisle... you've cut the number of people who can physically sit in that part of the plane in half, more or less.

If you're not charging the people in those seats twice as much, or getting some other advantage like having them as high-frequency repeat customers, you're losing money just having them in the plane, even before we talk about the cost of the improved service and so on. You'd do better to rip their seats out and replace them with more coach class seats at six seats to a row and 30 inches between rows.

[SCRawl]

They also come with enhanced services, which accounts for some of the additional cost, but might not be in the budget of an ordinary traveller.

We're talking a price gap of several hundred to thousands of dollars. Which isn't really an option for most people, especially if their flight is for emergency/urgent reasons.

That was pretty much my point. Was I unclear in my post? Just in case I was, I'll break it down a little further:

- OP's solution to extra-wide buttocks: buy the adjacent seat
- Lusankya's solution to my suggestion about somewhat variable seating: wider seats already exist in first/business classes
- my rebuttal to Lusankya's solution: first/business class seats are an even more onerous solution to buying a second seat, so it's a non-starter.

[General Zod]

They also come with enhanced services, which accounts for some of the additional cost, but might not be in the budget of an ordinary traveller.

We're talking a price gap of several hundred to thousands of dollars. Which isn't really an option for most people, especially if their flight is for emergency/urgent reasons.

That was pretty much my point. Was I unclear in my post? Just in case I was, I'll break it down a little further:

- OP's solution to extra-wide buttocks: buy the adjacent seat
- Lusankya's solution to my suggestion about somewhat variable seating: wider seats already exist in first/business classes
- my rebuttal to Lusankya's solution: first/business class seats are an even more onerous solution to buying a second seat, so it's a non-starter.

It sounded like you just weren't sure of how much the difference was.

[eion]

Weren't chattel class seats originally designed to accommodate 95 out of 100 passengers based on size? If there's an FAA regulation that requires them to be designed as such, and the size of Americans is changing then the size of seats ought to change in response. Even if no regulation does exist perhaps one should.

I've got no issue with a person who can't fit in one seat being required to buy two seats or upgrade to a coach-plus or higher class seat, though this should apply not only to fat people but also the very tall or muscular, but I doubt very much this policy is being created for the benefit of the outsized person's fellow passengers.

[Simon_Jester]

Weren't chattel class seats originally designed to accommodate 95 out of 100 passengers based on size? If there's an FAA regulation that requires them to be designed as such, and the size of Americans is changing then the size of seats ought to change in response. Even if no regulation does exist perhaps one should.

Debatable; the size of Americans isn't changing for reasons the government has a legitimate interest in encouraging- quite the opposite, since it's already a major public health issue.

I've got no issue with a person who can't fit in one seat being required to buy two seats or upgrade to a coach-plus or higher class seat, though this should apply not only to fat people but also the very tall or muscular, but I doubt very much this policy is being created for the benefit of the outsized person's fellow passengers.

By and large, though, such people are not so large around the waist that they need more room than the standard seat provides. There are rare exceptions... but sure, why not make them pay for the extra seat?

[eion]

Weren't chattel class seats originally designed to accommodate 95 out of 100 passengers based on size? If there's an FAA regulation that requires them to be designed as such, and the size of Americans is changing then the size of seats ought to change in response. Even if no regulation does exist perhaps one should.

Debatable; the size of Americans isn't changing for reasons the government has a legitimate interest in encouraging- quite the opposite, since it's already a major public health issue.

It's not about encouraging or discouraging anything. It's about recognizing that the standard size of Americans has changed, just as the average height has increased with improved nutrition, and designing systems accordingly.

I've got no issue with a person who can't fit in one seat being required to buy two seats or upgrade to a coach-plus or higher class seat, though this should apply not only to fat people but also the very tall or muscular, but I doubt very much this policy is being created for the benefit of the outsized person's fellow passengers.

By and large, though, such people are not so large around the waist that they need more room than the standard seat provides. There are rare exceptions... but sure, why not make them pay for the extra seat?

The issue with the very tall is that their legs will not fit in the legroom provided, and so either press against the seat in front of them, preventing that passenger from utilizing all their space, or they must turn their legs sideways, impacting on other's space.

Regardless, without an industry-wide standard on seat size and "fat flyer" policy enforcement, then airlines have great interest in reducing the size of their seats and charging as they see fit to maximize their profits.

[General Zod]

By and large, though, such people are not so large around the waist that they need more room than the standard seat provides. There are rare exceptions... but sure, why not make them pay for the extra seat?

Do you really think that the airlines will be able to come up with a policy that can be implemented fairly and uniformly? I expect a great deal of hilarity and lawsuits the first time an airline tells a pregnant woman she's too fat to fly and has to pay double.

[Simon_Jester]

I understand the problem. But there has to be a limit- at some point, the added burden that very large passengers can place on the airline has to be addressed somehow. If they scale up the seats so that everyone will fit in them, they may not be able to fly at a profit at all, let alone fly at a profit in a competitive market. If they don't, some percentage won't fit.

Absent the 'charge extra' solution, the burden of dealing with that falls entirely on the neighboring passengers, who are forced to accept an uncomfortable flight on account of being next to the large person. How is that fair?

[General Zod]

I understand the problem. But there has to be a limit- at some point, the added burden that very large passengers can place on the airline has to be addressed somehow. If they scale up the seats so that everyone will fit in them, they may not be able to fly at a profit at all, let alone fly at a profit in a competitive market. If they don't, some percentage won't fit.

Absent the 'charge extra' solution, the burden of dealing with that falls entirely on the neighboring passengers, who are forced to accept an uncomfortable flight on account of being next to the large person. How is that fair?

It's not fair if I have to sit next to someone that snores the entire flight or if I get stuck next to a crying infant either. But you can't possibly address everything that makes a flight uncomfortable. Adding in a few extra seats with priority given to large passengers would be a good compromise than retooling the entire cabin. It's not as if every passenger on a flight is going to be grotesquely overweight.

[SCRawl]

I've heard of these things. I've been on...counting on fingers...ten flights in my life, and of those only three had a separate section for the business/first classes. I recognize that this may be the exception rather than the norm. In any case, the availability of those seats isn't really the issue. It is well understood that an extra-wide passenger may be accommodated in an extra-wide seat, and that these seats are usually available in first/business class. The problem is that those seats are prohibitively expensive, often more than double the cost of an economy seat (which is the remedy proposed in the OP). They also come with enhanced services, which accounts for some of the additional cost, but might not be in the budget of an ordinary traveller.

As I pointed out, a big chunk of the extra cost just comes from the increased square footage per person in business class.

Suppose business class travelers get six inches more legroom (or, equivalently, more room to ease the seat back so they can sleep). That increases the length of plane body taken up by each row by 20% or so. Now give them several more inches of room to spread out side to side... to the point where you can only fit four seats into a row on a standard 3-3 seat narrow-body jet like a Boeing 737 or Airbus 320 and still have a decent amount of space in the aisle... you've cut the number of people who can physically sit in that part of the plane in half, more or less.

If you're not charging the people in those seats twice as much, or getting some other advantage like having them as high-frequency repeat customers, you're losing money just having them in the plane, even before we talk about the cost of the improved service and so on. You'd do better to rip their seats out and replace them with more coach class seats at six seats to a row and 30 inches between rows.

Strange...I wrote a response already, but I must have closed the window before posting it.

Anyway...if I were to implement my own suggestion, it would be by creating a few pockets of larger-girth seats and charging according to the extra room that they take up. In the standard 3-3 arrangement you mention, assuming that there's no leeway in terms of the aisle width, I could see replacing a few of the rows with three standard-width seats with two extra-tubby ones, with each seat costing 50% extra. On larger aircraft, I could imagine more convoluted arrangements that would be allowed, but the idea would always be to equate the room a passenger takes up with the amount a passenger must pay. A first/business class traveller pays for more than this room -- he also pays for the free booze, better food, and other amenities that the cattle class do not receive, and the non-wealthy extra-wide passenger does not generally require.

[Broomstick]

You really think this will significantly increase the airline's profits? Just how many people this obese are there?

Well... approximately 30% of the people residing in the state of Indiana where I live are considered "obese" by medical definition. That's about 2 million right there, and there are 49 other states in the US...

There are a lot of people who could fall into that category in this country. Of course, some carry the weight better than others. Two individuals could have the same body mass index yet be of significantly different shape.

[Broomstick]

Weren't chattel class seats originally designed to accommodate 95 out of 100 passengers based on size? If there's an FAA regulation that requires them to be designed as such, and the size of Americans is changing then the size of seats ought to change in response. Even if no regulation does exist perhaps one should.

Debatable; the size of Americans isn't changing for reasons the government has a legitimate interest in encouraging- quite the opposite, since it's already a major public health issue.

It's not about encouraging or discouraging anything. It's about recognizing that the standard size of Americans has changed, just as the average height has increased with improved nutrition, and designing systems accordingly.

Last I read the regulations (which is about 5 years ago now) the FAA defined an adult human being as 5 feet 10 inches tall (178 cm) and 170 pounds (77 kg). This has been the definition since the 1950's, and has roots in the average size of the average airman in WWII - in other words, men raised during the Great Depression which may have affected the size and weight of young adults in the 1940's.

Americans have gotten both taller and wider since then. But the definitions have not changed.

[Simon_Jester]

It's not fair if I have to sit next to someone that snores the entire flight or if I get stuck next to a crying infant either. But you can't possibly address everything that makes a flight uncomfortable. Adding in a few extra seats with priority given to large passengers would be a good compromise than retooling the entire cabin. It's not as if every passenger on a flight is going to be grotesquely overweight.

Fair enough, but if I require a seat that takes up more floor space in the plane, I think I should reasonably be expected to pay for it- if not double, some amount proportionate to the extra floor space. Space in the plane is an airline's stock in trade, and I'm using up more of it than an ordinary passenger.

This is also what SCRawl said; I don't disagree with what he's proposing.

[Straha]

To add a really quick thought: I think there's a lot of overreacting going on.

A. There's no way that air lines are going to charge this fee against technically 'obese' people. The second they do they'll trigger a massive backlash against the business. The people they are concerned about are the 400+ people who do take up more than one seat.

B. It's a safety issue, not a comfort issue. We had a thread about this. The issue is that if a person, like the one in the image below, cannot be safely restrained during take-off, landing and an emergency situation then the plane is potentially unsafe to fly. Barring an extra-wide seating section, the only way to safely restrain people like this is to have a second seat for them.

[SCRawl]

Last I read the regulations (which is about 5 years ago now) the FAA defined an adult human being as 5 feet 10 inches tall (178 cm) and 170 pounds (77 kg). This has been the definition since the 1950's, and has roots in the average size of the average airman in WWII - in other words, men raised during the Great Depression which may have affected the size and weight of young adults in the 1940's.

Americans have gotten both taller and wider since then. But the definitions have not changed.

The average American human male is still a shade under 5'10" at age 19, according to the cdc (warning: it's a pdf). According to the study I referenced, it's only the weight which has been on the rise. Perhaps airmen in WWII were taller than their non-flying counterparts.

[Broomstick]

"Airmen" in these sense are not just pilots but anyone who'd be on the airplane crew - on some of WWII bombers you might have 4-5 times as many other crewmen as pilots on mission flights. Just thought I'd clarify on that point.

[Isolder74]

You also had lots of very small guys who sat in ball turrets in that statistic then.

[Broomstick]

Correct. The ball turret guys were often those too small to fit the pilot's seat. In fact, most of them were shorter than I am, and I'm not considered a tall woman in any way.

Also consider that some of the guys manhandling the bombs were huge guys, sometimes those too big to fit in the pilot's seat.

[Big Phil]

Part of the problem, though the airlines won't admit it, is that seats are getting smaller, and they're stuffing more into the planes. My shoulder hangs out into the aisle if I'm sitting in that seat, or has to curl up against the cabin wall if I'm in a window seat, and this is a new thing over the last 4 or 5 years, so I would have a huge problem paying for a second seat when I'm not obese.

The cost of the ticket is also going down.

Cleveland to Washington DC then $400 in today's dollars ($75 at the time)
Cleveland to Washington DC TODAY $184 nonstop on Continental (Orbitz.com)



http://mysite.verizon.net/vze6l53f/what ... nthe1960s/

[Raw Shark]

"They are taking money away from us," said Garcia, 31. "It's bad as it is for the economy."

What the fuck does this even mean?

As for the numbers, I don't think that it will have a huge effect. On the one hand, they'll be able to sell a few more seats on some flights. On the other hand, thousands will turn away from this airline because they disagree with this policy. Margins are really thin for airlines these days; perhaps gaining back a few seats each flight will make a big difference to the bottom line.

Thousands will turn away... to whom? According to the article:

Eight other U.S. airlines - including Delta and Southwest - have similar seating policies requiring extra-large passengers to "purchase a second seat" if they can't fit into one, Urbanski Janikowski said.

That's nine US airlines with a policy resembling this one, at least three of them (including the most recent) major and each making it a smaller PR hit for the next. It seems likely that the vast majority of airlines will soon follow suit as the number of obese people attempting to righteously boycott their oppressors begin to clog the planes of the stragglers like arteries and give them a reputation as "the airline that will always put a fatty up in your grill."

The true holdouts, I predict, will be small in both number and market share, already barely competitive and willing to try anything. They will attempt to court this rather sizable (sorry, had to happen) niche by creating a limited number of planes with all-wide seating. They'll have to make more on every passenger, but they can smokescreen the additional expense of the tickets with unique targeted perks such as unlimited free snack foods (while supplies last) and free use of a mobility scooter in the terminal, and/or by billing themselves as "Slightly cheaper than buying two coach seats on a regular plane, with all of your dignity intact!" What they lose in long-term revenues due to the shorter average lifespan of their loyal customers may be regained with interest a generation later, as America stays fat or becomes more fat and a bumper crop of children who learned fatness in the home mature and mostly stick with the brand their family has always used, but it'll be an expensive gamble.