Posted on 02/22/2025 11:07:02 PM PST by Cronos
A debate is brewing over whether airlines should adopt weight-based pricing, charging passengers based on their weight to reduce fuel consumption and emissions.
This discussion follows a broader trend of U.S. airlines implementing fees for checked baggage, which began in 2008 with American Airlines, and has since become standard practice.
While Samoa Air's 2013 'fat tax' failed to gain traction, Finnair recently conducted a three-month voluntary data collection initiative, gathering passengers' weight along with their carry-on luggage.
This anonymized data — including age, gender and travel class — will be used to refine aircraft balance and loading calculations from 2025 to 2030.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Well you pay extra for overweight luggage, so...
Opening,up a can-o-worms me thinks. Businesses will inspired to charge overweight customers more because of the extra “wear and tear” they cause on the floors and carpets and floor joints etc. And they will have to pay higher fees for traveling on roads due to increased wear and tear too. Food stuff will be more expensive for heavy eaters due to increased demand for food that they require. They will be charged more carbon credits because they are gassier than skinny folks sometimes. (Althoug vegans produce a ton of methane too.) Parasailors will be charged more beczuse the boats hauling them will have to work harder due to increased wind resistance of heavier people.
The possibilities for exploiting heavier people are endless
People didn't stop "having hobbies" and "not athletic". I think it is food additives. I think it is "preservatives" which are added in USA prepared foods and generally not in Europe. These same "preservatives" are chelating agents, and the same chemincals are added to animal feed in feed lots to promote appetite and rapid weight gain. 
I agree to charge by the pound. No discrimination when everybody is charged by the pound.
You are discrimating against Canadians, because we weigh in kilos.
Speaking as a former Boeing engineer every seat passenger is assumed to be 200 Lbs for weight and balance.
What it going unsaid here is a passenger having to deal with a grossly fat person interfering in their personal space.
That is the real problem!
I once got stuck in such a situation and rather than deal with the fat asses I sat on beverage boxes in the galley from Atlanta to Seattle. Aircrew only bothered me when we had to land, they knew what the problem was.
I’m not a small guy, 6 foot tall and 180 pounds.
And I can take care of myself in a fight( that’s probably why they tolerated me in their galley).
Plus of being in the galley you could eat and get food when you wanted.
We had 2 women at work who,were grossly obese- serious health problems and all. One would buy a cake for desert, and would bring it to work and eat the whole thing after polishing off lunch. I dunno how she managed it. Most folks would bring just a small slice for desert.
Which will inspire heavier folks to want to lose weight in order to get discounted flights
Its stress eating. And/or literally pushing people away from themselves by getting bigger and bigger.
Its often the only thing they think they can truly control in their lives. Coping. Not a very good solution.
The people that are obese and keep getting bigger, do not exercise. There are people who are heavy and exercise because they want to lose weight, and they can start losing weight. They arent the obese people sitting around continuing to stuff themselves every day, and keep getting bigger.
Comfort foods are generally what they like to engorge on. They usually arent healthy and certainly not in the amount they eat them. Plenty are highly processed, plenty drink a lot of soda, plenty have oils in them, plenty of them are calorie dense items.
They should also ban Emotional Support Animals from traveling among people. Put them in cages in the luggage compartment.
puddle jumpers have always had to be concerned about weight.
I was in one on a flight from Phoenix to Lake Havasu City.
The pilot & co-pilot actually seated us by assumed weight.
Charging people more for their weight WILL NOT reduce the consumption of fuel nor will it reduce the emissions.
It will only pay for the extra fuel used for the increased amount of weight and the extra fuel used will INCREASE the emissions produced from burning the additional fuel.
I will say that the difference in headwinds or tailwinds is going to be more than the increased weight of a passenger.
Obese fly cargo. Simple fix.
That’s a great idea and us average schlubs fly free right? 👍🤪😂
Screw the Canadians all they do is boo the US national anthem and say eh all the time. They do play pretty good hockey but still screw the Canadians. 😀
The chart corresponds with the increasing serving size of soft drinks. Coca Cola went from a 6 oz bottle serving to now a 64 oz soda fountain bucket.
Wow! The effing luggage compartments can kill an animal. Give your dog the seat and you put your butt in the luggage compartment or drive. Nuff said.
I was on an Embraer flight when I saw my luggage being taken off the plane because we exceeded the weight limit.
-PJ
RFKJr has pretty much said what you said in your first line. He has pointed out that he can give someone a proper organic foods diet with real meat, for the cost of the Ozempic prescriptions many want out medical insurance systems to pay for. That last in insanity, brought to us all by the Pharma-Medical-Industrial Complex.
I’m fat because I am an Awesomeness-Magnet.
Awesomeness gravitates towards me, and becomes part of me, right around the waistline.
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