Too FAT to Fly

A US Airways passenger claims he was forced to stand for seven hours during a flight because the obese man next to him was overflowing into his seat. Arthur Berkowitz told consumer website elliott.org he had to stand for most of the US Airways seven-hour flight from Alaska to Philadelphia, and could not buckle his seat belt during take-off and landing. The snippet above comes from Yahoo Travel. The airline says that the man did not have to stand, very unreasonable since his own seat was partially taken over by the passenger next to him. With the epidemic of obesity around it is about time that airlines and other passenger services that have limited size seats started charging passengers by size and weight. That would be an incentive for fat folk to slim down, particularly if they travel a lot. Let's face it, if you want to send a parcel it is usually costed on a size / weight formula. Why should smaller people pay as much as large ones? A plane full of small people would use less fuel, could fit more people on, it's a win all round. Airlines could have flight categories, fat flights, normal flights and small flights, each plane fitted out to suit the target group and priced accordingly. Fat people have a larger carbon footprint and should be made to pay for it in these carbon credit times! It would have been nice if the flight staff had given up one of their small seats to the passenger affected by his fat fellow flyer, after all it was their mistake in not assessing that this passenger would need two seat. They could have put the fat man in the cargo hold, after all it was only a seven hour flight and his fat would have kept him warm, plus he would have had a seven hour fasting diet. Perhaps it is about time that airlines had fewer, bigger seats in some areas to accommodate larger people so that we could all fly in comfort. We all pay enough for a comfortable passage!