Should obese people pay more to fly?

[RobLandsdown91]

I saw this on the DailyMail Online.

dailymail.co.uk/news/articl...

What does everyone think.

[RobLandsdown91]

Anyone had a chance to read this yet?

[moreless Administrator 7 stone]

Hi Rob,

Yes I've just read it. It's controversial, but understandable.

Years ago, passengers and their luggage were weighed before boarding an aircraft, something I remember as a totally humiliated fat child. However, it makes more sense than a guesstimate of 12, or 12 1/2 stone per passenger, to include men, women and children. If even a 1/4 of the passengers were obese, that makes all flight calculations way out and could lead to a catastrophe.

If I were a skinny passenger who was charged for overweight luggage, I'd feel extremely p****d off if the obese passenger with the normal weight luggage wasn't charged!

I suspect that as the obesity epidemic grows, a "fat tax", or similar will be introduced and however much we may dislike it, if we wish to travel by air, we'll have to cough up

[Jay86]

In the aviation industry it's pretty much inevitable. Every gram of weight is calculable in how much fuel is needed. Airlines are getting so stingy with fuel these days (since the more fuel loaded the more you burn etc) that some airlines have been making (worryingly regular) emergency landings since they don't have enough spare fuel to circle airports or make their way to neighboring airports at the request of controllers. The industry has changed dramatically in the past few decades and will continue to change. So ultimately yes, if airlines can get away with charging fat people more, then they will. A large and vocal number of their regular customers will continue to complain and us fatties won't really speak out and if we do we will be criticized by the media for being fat and made to look like lazy smelly slobs and be ignored.

The worrying implications of a decision like this (if made officially) though are where it might extend to. Discriminating against fat people is one of the last few acceptable forms of discrimination and even movements to promote body positivity are shot down and smeared by the media. So we have to pay more for planes, ok that's kind of understandable. Then train companies, already struggling to maintain their infrastructure with their insistence on giving all their profits to their shareholders and putting up the fares to cover the maintenance year on year, will likely think about jumping on the bandwagon. At present the way the system works would make that difficult, but what if needing to come through the manned barrier rather than the turnstile (the one you go through with a big bag) required a 'large' ticket. Anyone with a big bag or a wide ass is suddenly paying more. It wouldn't take much to narrow the barriers here and there to maximize that number either. What if companies start charging you per seat on long journeys and the ticket inspector decides you need more than one seat you naughty fatty.

From there its anywhere. Even gyms could jump on the bandwagon and say that fatties wear their machines out faster and sweat too much and by then it will be ok to say that. If companies are allowed to weigh or look at someone and judge that they need to pay more because they are fat then fat people will pay more, businesses don't turn down free money.