According to the World Health Organization, we are experiencing a “global obesity epidemic”. The following points from its January 2015 fact sheet bear this out:
- Worldwide obesity has more than doubled since 1980.
- In 2014, more than 1.9 billion adults, 18 years and older, were overweight. Of these over 600 million were obese.
It is hardly surprising, therefore, that complaints about obese passengers encroaching the seats of fellow passengers are reaching critical mass. Which is why many airlines are requiring obese passengers to pay for an extra seat.
Obese British man told he must pay for two seats on plane…
[I]n the age of the supersize traveller, our total weight (passenger and luggage) should be taken into account at check-in…
Tall people already have to pay for extra legroom.
(UK Daily Mail, October 26, 2015)
As it happens, I was in the vanguard of those calling for airlines to implement such policies:
The only fair and equitable way to deal with obese passengers is to require them to purchase two seats – the second one perhaps at half price.
(“Bar Obese Passengers from Flying?” The iPINIONS Journal, September 11, 2009)
I was acutely mindful back then that some might condemn such policies for discriminating against fat people. Indeed, this is why you’d be hard-pressed to find any airline expressly stating or strictly enforcing its obese-passenger policy.
But if you have ever had an obese passenger encroach your space with impunity, you could be forgiven for thinking that you’re the one being discriminated against. This is why I’ve always emphasized the extent to which obese passengers encroach the space of other passengers, instead of how much they add to the overall weight of the airplane.
Incidentally, this physical encroachment is as distinguishable from crying babies or heavy perfume as punching a person is from screaming in her face. It also stands in instructive contrast to the fatuous way some airlines cite fuel consumption to justify taxing overweight people the way they tax overweight baggage.
In any event, the only sustainable alternative to requiring an obese passenger to pay for an extra seat is for courts to order the airlines to provide one as a matter of human rights. In other words, accommodate people with extra weight the way they accommodate people with disabilities….
Related commentaries:
Air France…