United Airlines "Too Fat To Fly" Policy

[Darth Fanboy]

Maybe they should put treadmills on the planes instead of seats?

So much for jumbo jets.

From now on, United Airlines passengers with extra-wide bodies will have to pay for an extra seat - if they want to fly the friendly skies.

Flight attendants will be on the lookout for portly passengers who can't buckle the seat belts or put their arm rests down.

Those deemed too fat to fly "must either purchase a ticket for an additional seat, or purchase an upgrade to a cabin with seats that address the above-listed scenarios," United Airlines wrote on its Web site.

If no other seats are available on that flight, the hefty flier will be grounded until two adjacent seats can be found on the next plane out.

"It's discrimination," said Jack Gillotto, a 300-pounder from Danbury, Conn., as he waited for a flight at LaGuardia Airport.

"I understand if a person takes space from another, they should pay extra," said Gillotto, 48. "But not an entire second seat."

Maria Garcia, flying home to California from LaGuardia, said United is picking on full-figured fliers like herself.

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

Juan Rivera, who goes by "El Gordo" because he weighs 230 pounds and stands just 5-feet-2, said, "That affects me, as an overweight person.

"I don't feel like I should pay for being bigger," said Rivera, 45, of the Bronx.

United insisted it was simply acting on the 700-plus complaints it received last year about obese travelers "infringing" on their neighbors' space.

"This will apply after all other solutions are exhausted," United spokeswoman Robin Urbanski Janikowski said. "Should the flight be full, which is rare in today's economy ... we will offer the second seat on another flight at the same fare that was originally paid."

Fat fliers are a growing problem for U.S. airlines at a time when space is at a premium, travel is expensive and 34% of Americans are obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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.

Karl Shen, who weighs 250 pounds and flies frequently to Florida on business, said it was just a matter of time before the airlines cracked down on fliers like himself.

In years past, Shen said flight attendants would offer him an extra seat for free out of courtesy - if not sympathy. "They could see the seats were too small for me," said Shen, 47, of Brooklyn.

Now, if he has to, Shen said he's ready to fork out more "to be comfortable."

"By the time I get off the plane, it's very painful," he said.

Admittedly I am not the smallest flight passenger but you have to be pretty big even for an overweight person to not be able to fit into these seats to the point where you need to be buying another one. While I do have some sympathy the fact is that if you take up the space required for two people you shouldn't be permitted to get twice the space for the same price and cross country flights are miserable enough already.

[PeZook]

"It's discrimination," said Jack Gillotto, a 300-pounder from Danbury, Conn., as he waited for a flight at LaGuardia Airport.

"I understand if a person takes space from another, they should pay extra," said Gillotto, 48. "But not an entire second seat."

Maria Garcia, flying home to California from LaGuardia, said United is picking on full-figured fliers like herself.

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

You know, these eerily remind me of smokers when they whined and hemmed and hawed that smoking bans were discrimation, taxes are extortion etc.

How does Mr. Gilotto figure that a guy taking 1.5 seat shouldn't pay a double price? Should the airline be obliged to find half a passenger to fill up the remaining half a seat? If he was fat enough to require a crane and a team of 50 experts just to move, would it be unlawful discrimination if the airline demanded he charter a cargo plane?

[Aaron]

The only people that are really going to fit in a half seat would be a smaller child. Kind of hard to guarantee there will be one.

[Solauren]

I would you want your smaller child relocated just to accomidate a person whom you do not knows weight?

Sorry, I'm a overweight person myself, and I have no problem with this policy. (Mind you, I'm also of a body type that fights into normal sized seats without a problem.)

Unless you're one of those people with one of thoe rare medical conditions that caused you to gain weight despite all efforts, (and you can get it independently verified) just suck it up and deal with it. It's your stupid tax for letting yourself get fat.

[Alyeska]

Half of those people are lying about their weight. 250 points and having to use two seats? Your full of shit. I weigh 250 pounds and can readily fit in coach seating with room on either side of the arm rest. If he is spilling over into another seat he damned well weighs more than that.

[PeZook]

I don't even know how anybody could GET that fat, barring some freaky medical condition. I weigh 216 pounds (98 kilograms) and it's stable, and I don't particularly watch what I eat and my job is a sitting one and there's nothing stopping me from entirely normal functioning.

If I had for some insane reason to start eating enough to require two seats on an airplane, eating would stop being a pleasure at all, since every meal would require overeating to the point of nausea.

[Akhlut]

Half of those people are lying about their weight. 250 points and having to use two seats? Your full of shit. I weigh 250 pounds and can readily fit in coach seating with room on either side of the arm rest. If he is spilling over into another seat he damned well weighs more than that.

I wondered about that myself. I was about 250 when I took a flight in May on Southwest, and I managed to fit inbetween their ridiculously small armrests, and I'm naturally widebodied anyway (considering that my shoulders themselves are about 2 feet wide).

Luckily, next time I fly anyway, it's going to be with my wife and son, so even if they do declare me too fatass for one seat, I'll just say "hey, my son only takes up half a seat, so me and him will be okay flying next to each other."

[Themightytom]

Half of those people are lying about their weight. 250 points and having to use two seats? Your full of shit. I weigh 250 pounds and can readily fit in coach seating with room on either side of the arm rest. If he is spilling over into another seat he damned well weighs more than that.

I don't know about the second guy but the guy who was 230 lbs was 5 foot 2.

That would make him pretty rotund.


Personally I sympathize with obese people being singled out, but I also remember several flights with some huge person or other sweating on my arm or hyperventilating into my ear, thinking to myself "This airline sucks why the F am I here?"

That being said, my suspicion is this isn't motivated by customer complaints, I mean, nobody's forcing airlines to have seats so closely packed in the first place, even a bus tends to be more comfortable in my experience. The cynic in me suspects this has something to do with price of ticket relative to volume of fuel.

[Aaron]

I would you want your smaller child relocated just to accomidate a person whom you do not knows weight?

Sorry, I'm a overweight person myself, and I have no problem with this policy. (Mind you, I'm also of a body type that fights into normal sized seats without a problem.)

Unless you're one of those people with one of thoe rare medical conditions that caused you to gain weight despite all efforts, (and you can get it independently verified) just suck it up and deal with it. It's your stupid tax for letting yourself get fat.

Of course not.

[PeZook]

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

[Stravo]

As a large person myself I am more annoyed with these whining overwieght people who feel they are being discriminated against. Guess what? Being black doesn't effect my neighbor on a plane, being blind, being learning disabled, etc doesn't either. Being a fat fuck overflowing into the next seat does.

This trend of overweight people trying to form themselves into a protected class of individuals is a bit sickening. They should be trying to get out of that class by losing weight instead of claiming bullshit like "fattism"

[SCRawl]

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

Well, this is the US they're talking about...

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.

[Block]

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.

[Shroom Man 777]

It would be cool if, say, really skinny anorexics could just pay for one seat if two of them can fit together on it. Like, the opposite of billing a fatty if he ends up fitting two seats.

[HarrionGreyjoy]

Or cramming two toddlers into a seat, because there's no way that wouldn't end in blood and tears.

[Simon_Jester]

I don't even know how anybody could GET that fat, barring some freaky medical condition. I weigh 216 pounds (98 kilograms) and it's stable, and I don't particularly watch what I eat and my job is a sitting one and there's nothing stopping me from entirely normal functioning.

I'm considerably heavier than you (though even at my worst I didn't- quite- overfill a coach class airline seat), so I think I can explain.

It's mostly about one's internal definition of "normal eating," in my opinion. You can learn, so to speak, to consume ridiculous amounts of food per day. Think about athletes with rigorous training regimens; they have to take in something like twice the calories just to make up for what their body burns.

The catch is that it's possible to acquire that kind of huge appetite over time without the corresponding calorie-burning routine. That's when people get huge: they're eating as if they worked like a horse, when in fact they just have a desk job and are almost totally inactive.

You, PeZook, would seem to have avoided that problem. In my case, I've had real problems with just trying to redefine my sense of a 'normal' amount of calories to consume in order to lose weight, because five or ten years of shitty eating habits don't evaporate overnight. I've had a fair amount of luck, but it's one of the main reasons every diet advice source you'll ever see talks about counting calories, "smart substitutions," and things like that. Because for someone who routinely overeats, it requires a noticeable change of perspective to see that the large portions you're eating are in fact not normal.

For people who are really, really huge, I can only imagine how big an issue this must be; it's kind of frightening to imagine the level of cognitive dissonance required.

If I had for some insane reason to start eating enough to require two seats on an airplane, eating would stop being a pleasure at all, since every meal would require overeating to the point of nausea.

If it were a case of you suddenly deciding to force feed yourself in order to become the two hundred kilogram man, absolutely. For people who do become the two hundred kilogram man, or even the 150 kilogram man, it's probably going to be a matter of what they're used to... and more likely than not, they became used to eating such absurd quantities of food starting in childhood.

That being said, my suspicion is this isn't motivated by customer complaints, I mean, nobody's forcing airlines to have seats so closely packed in the first place, even a bus tends to be more comfortable in my experience. The cynic in me suspects this has something to do with price of ticket relative to volume of fuel.

To be fair, airlines face a significant constraint on width. If they want to pack six seats per row into a Boeing 737, the seats aren't going to be all that wide. If they make the seats wider, they have two choices. They can make the aisle in the middle narrower, which becomes a losing proposition very fast, since it's no good having comfy seats if you can't get into the plane. Or they can cut back to four seats per row, at which point 33% of their net income on each flight evaporates. I doubt the airlines could operate at all under those conditions.

So short of investing in a whole new generation of wide-body jets (which it would still be far more profitable to pack tighter, and get eight seats per row instead of six), or breakthroughs that make it practical to build jet bodies half again as long as they are today, they're kind of stuck with making the seats narrow.

[SCRawl]

It would be cool if, say, really skinny anorexics could just pay for one seat if two of them can fit together on it. Like, the opposite of billing a fatty if he ends up fitting two seats.

While I agree with a certain amount of coolness, that just wouldn't work. Strapping two people into one seat wouldn't be safe, and anyway the airlines aren't out to help people save money.

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.

(Damn it, I accidentally used my mod powers to edit Shroom's post instead of quoting it. It's fixed now, but if anyone saw it, yeah, that was me.)

[Shroom Man 777]

Thanks, SC. I was about to start talking to myself.

I have another idea. What if each seat, as in just the seat itself, has a standard "adaptor" located at its base (connecting it to the floor)? So if a hueg guy comes in, they can just remove the standard seat from the adaptor and bolt on a larger seat more fit to the hueg person? Since airplanes won't likely carry so many hueg people, a plane just has to carry a limited amount of these "alternate" seats on the occasion of hueg people, or other people with special needs.

Or would this, bringing extra removable seats which you can swap with other seats (and also modifying current seat designs to be adaptable), be prohibitive and costly for miserly air companies?

[Akhlut]

You, PeZook, would seem to have avoided that problem. In my case, I've had real problems with just trying to redefine my sense of a 'normal' amount of calories to consume in order to lose weight, because five or ten years of shitty eating habits don't evaporate overnight. I've had a fair amount of luck, but it's one of the main reasons every diet advice source you'll ever see talks about counting calories, "smart substitutions," and things like that. Because for someone who routinely overeats, it requires a noticeable change of perspective to see that the large portions you're eating are in fact not normal.

QFT; I know that I'm having a tough time reevaluating how big of a portion I should eat, especially since I'm no longer in college where I walked damn near everywhere and had to take 2-3 flights of stairs multiple times a day. And, holy shit, it's hard; that's why I prefer it when my wife gets me a plate of food so that I don't overeat.

So short of investing in a whole new generation of wide-body jets (which it would still be far more profitable to pack tighter, and get eight seats per row instead of six), or breakthroughs that make it practical to build jet bodies half again as long as they are today, they're kind of stuck with making the seats narrow.

Aren't airlines pretty much always better off making the conditions as sardine-like as possible so that they can get as much money per flight as possible? Unless you're specifically charging a premium on seats simply because they're more comfortable then the average airline seat (and thus charging 33% more per seat because you only have 4 seats instead of 6 per row), obviously.

[Simon_Jester]

So short of investing in a whole new generation of wide-body jets (which it would still be far more profitable to pack tighter, and get eight seats per row instead of six), or breakthroughs that make it practical to build jet bodies half again as long as they are today, they're kind of stuck with making the seats narrow.

Aren't airlines pretty much always better off making the conditions as sardine-like as possible so that they can get as much money per flight as possible? Unless you're specifically charging a premium on seats simply because they're more comfortable then the average airline seat (and thus charging 33% more per seat because you only have 4 seats instead of 6 per row), obviously.

Exactly.

Thing is, to make it profitable to fly a small sub-class of people in the 4-per-row seats, they have to charge them nearly* 50% more right there... which, come to think of it, is probably a big part of where business class ticket prices come from.

*Reduced weight of carrying four passengers instead of six will help very slightly... unless all four passengers are obese and weigh half again as much as regular people

[General Zod]

How upfront is United going to be about this "fat charge"? If the policy is clearly explained to passengers it might not be such a problem but airlines have a bad habit of dropping all kinds of fees on unwary customers.

"This will apply after all other solutions are exhausted," United spokeswoman Robin Urbanski Janikowski said. "Should the flight be full, which is rare in today's economy ... we will offer the second seat on another flight at the same fare that was originally paid."

Really? Every flight I've been on in the last few months has been completely full and airlines have a rather nasty problem of over-booking flights. Somehow I don't believe this.

[Lusankya]

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 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.

[Chardok]

I feel like this should not even have to be disclosed. It's common sense - if you spill over into another seat, you must pay for that seat - done.

[General Zod]

I feel like this should not even have to be disclosed. It's common sense - if you spill over into another seat, you must pay for that seat - done.

Do you have any idea how ridiculous it is to say a business should operate their fees on "common sense" rather than up-front disclosure?

[Chardok]

I feel like this should not even have to be disclosed. It's common sense - if you spill over into another seat, you must pay for that seat - done.

Do you have any idea how ridiculous it is to say a business should operate their fees on "common sense" rather than up-front disclosure?

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.