Floor plan of Boeings newest 777:
Posted on 06/28/2002 4:18:42 AM PDT by 2Trievers
JUST ABOUT EVERYONE gets a turn at discrimination-induced outrage in Ornery America. Last week it’s “people of size” — otherwise known as fat people — who take up too much space on airplanes.
Southwest Airlines planned to start charging double for people whose girth consumes more than one seat. Fat people are furious; civil liberties lawyers are drooling; skinny people are skipping lunch.
This is one of those cases where everybody’s right and everybody’s wrong all at the same time. Fat people are right that the airline’s policy is discriminatory; civil liberties defenders are probably right that making fat people pay extra just because they’re fat violates the spirit of the Americans With Disabilities Act.
And airlines are certainly right that they ought to be able to charge more for people who consume more space. If you order two meals, you pay for two meals no matter how hungry you are.
Likewise, though space is a less tangible commodity than food, it is no less a “product” if you happen to be in the airline business. Airlines sell space. If you need more than one space to accommodate your generous person, then you have to pay for it.
All logical, reasonable and, in a free market, fair.
But — and this is a big but, so to speak — the problem isn’t just fat people, who account for a majority of Americans depending on whose body mass index you use. Under new federal standards, as many as 65 percent of Americans are “obese.”
The problem is airline seats are too dadgum small!! Is that clear?
They’re too small for anyone who ties his own shoelaces. They’re too small for relatively petite people like me. Even seated in an aisle seat, which I always lobby for, I am miserable in coach class and never travel without a Valium just in case the coffin walls start closing in. I can’t imagine what a three-hour flight must be like for someone who happens to carry an extra 20 to 30 pounds (not exactly obese) or who stands 6 feet tall.
On a recent flight, the two men in my row were both 6 feet 5 inches. They had to prop their chins on their knees and sip their tranquilizer through a straw. If fat people have to pay more for taking up extra space, should tall or large-but-not-fat people have to pay less because the airline industry refuses to acknowledge that human beings do not come in single, compact sizes?
Leg room is an oxymoron. There isn’t any. As for seats, most in coach class measure 17 inches wide, give or take a fraction. (You can compare airline seat widths and pitches, airline jargon for leg room, at http://businesstravel.about.com/cs/airlineseatmaps/)
To put that into perspective, my office chair seat is 19 inches wide with a 22-inch spread between the armrests. I enjoy about four inches of wiggle room, which means that a 17-inch seat gives me exactly two inches of wiggle room. People who are normal to heavy, or just larger than my 5’6” frame, have exactly zero wiggle room.
And the airlines say fat people are whining? Please. Fat people are fat. They’re not evil; they’re not intentionally overweight; they’re not criminals. The airlines, on the other hand, are sadistic punishers who treat their clients like pre-burger material en route to the slaughterhouse and they deserve to be punished for it.
The answer isn’t to tax people for being fat, but to accommodate the market, which is large and growing. I’m not a defender of obesity, but I am a defender of sanity, and the airlines fail the test.
Market logic may support making large people pay more for using more “product,” but the same logic dictates that airlines should treat their clients with respect and consideration. I say, Fat And Skinny Unite (FASU) and stop flying until the airlines give us bigger seats.
It’s the least they can do for customers who, for the privilege of being miserable, endure long lines, subject themselves to body searches, and pretend not to notice the radical Islamist-looking dude who just breezed through security while Random Granny had her walker disassembled for closer inspection.
See you on I-95.
Kathleen Parker is a columnist with the Orlando Sentinel.
That said, I think airlines are going to install "passenger compacters" to squish passengers to maximum allowed size before boarding before they increase the size of the seats.
I'm only 6'1", but on one Midway Airlines flight last year, I had to sit with my legs in the aisle because they would not fit behind the seat in front of me.
Flying just is not worth the hassle. If I can drive, even if it takes me longer, then drive I do.
Ditto. Driving is fine for me if I'm going someplace along the interstate (like Chicago or New York) but what about overseas? I don't see the cruise ships offering "coach class" anytime soon, and if they did, wouldn't it be just as bad as "steerage" was 100 years ago? In fact, couldn't we just say that "coach class" is the airlines version of "steerage"?
A hearty, bellowing AMEN to that!
God I hate flying. It's a tribute to my undying patriotism that I am going to make the five hour flight to FRiva Las Vegas.
1. Every airline has this policy; and
2. Southwest always has, too, but simply declined to enforce it for quite a long time.
As they have been losing revenue of late they decided to simply begin enforcing the rule they always had.
Unlike other airlines, Southwest's policy is that the "second seat" is a half-fare child's ticket; and should it prove that the flight is not full, the extra fare is refunded.
Do you hear the media telling these facts? No, that would be too much like telling ALL of the story, and it would deflate the controversy.
That doesn't sell papers or laundry soap, now does it?
I have to be in Nevada in Oct. I live in NC. I am not driving that distance, alone.
When we went to London and Edinburgh last year I flew business and she flew coach on another airline!
Linda, the idea for a larger seat for extra cash already exists on most airlines. Its called first class or business class. First class we understand (more leg room, better meals), but few want to pay the too-high price. So they came up with business class - IMO a cynical attempt to shakedown the frequent business traveller into paying more just to get leg room. Which is what we thought we were getting anyways.
That's why airlines like Legacy Airline were so popular. Only 54 seats on a 727. Forget the fancy food and the in flight DirecTV. I will pay a little more just to have the extra legroom.
SWA problem is that they don't have first class. I wonder, though, if the airline offers compensation when the armrest doesn't fold back all the way and stabs these biggie sized travellers in the back for two hours.
The cost of business class varies from run to run (and of course the cost of any airline ticket varies from moment to moment) but bc tickets seems to range from maybe 5X up to 10X and more of coach class. I had in mind a large seat sold for, say, 3/2 what coach seats are selling for since they typically take up about 3/2 as much room. So far as I know, nobody sells those.I don't know whether the reason is that the airlines fear they would be too popular with current bc buyers or not popular enough with coach passengers or some combination, or whether they just haven't been tried for no good reason.
What was the carrier? I've been on South American airlines flights where they packed the seats much closer together (front and back) than standard US flights, and where the seats could recline much further back. That's a real nightmare even for an ordinary sized person.
Yeah, it could be roomier, but I find that most of the cheaper airlines such as SW, Midway, JetBlue, etc have more room than the bigger names, so I usually try for them on the longer flights.
Exit row seats are a dream.
However, the real problem I suppose is transcontinental flights in wide-bodied aircraft, where there are hundreds and hundreds of "center" seats. I can't imagine sitting next to some fat guy for 7 hours or more, with 5 seats between me and the aisle - I would probably hang out in the lavatory for the majority of the flight.
And if I got bored, I might would tempt fate by fooling around with the smoke detector to see what happens.
In a thousand years, they will dig up a passenger jet and conclude we were all four feet tall.
--Boris
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