naked capitalism

Anonymous says:

How will they handle someone who is 6′-7″ – will weight be determined based on height?

Peripheral Visionary says:

The airlines are barking up the wrong tree on this one. I’m definitely on the skinny side, but it isn’t the weight of the airplane as much as it’s empty seats and uneconomical routes where they are losing money. Fill up the flights, and get rid of local short-hop flights that cost far more than they generate in revenue, then start thinking about charging bulk rates (hehehe–I couldn’t resist.)

The one thing airplanes could do to kill, and I mean kill, their business is allow people to talk on their mobile phones in flight. I will not voluntarily fly any airline that allows passengers to talk on their phones in flight, period.

When it comes to “fatties pay more”, however, I am all for allowing insurance plans to shamelessly discriminate on everything excepting gender, race, and genetic conditions. Auto insurance companies charge different rates for just about everything except race, why should health insurance be any different?

dearieme says:

Charging by weight will be, in fact, discriminatory by sex – just as imposing various strength requirements for jobs is classed as discriminatory by sex. How will they get round that?

Barley says:

I think an airline in Canada tried this by asking fat people to pony up for a second seat. If memory serves, it was struck down as unlawful.

Having sat many times beside a fat person, I always just sigh and stuff my head in a trashy novel.

Now this being said – why not charge a premium for kids. The little buggars that bounce around, cry, throw things, run up and down are somehow forgiven for all sins by way of ignoring parental responsibilites. This to me is far worse that sitting next to a fat person because it is hard to ignor and more often to pc to say anything. Actually let me correct this: I have asked and always will ask to not be seated next to children/families.

etc says:

If I sit next to an obese person, I force them to lower the arm rest, and that works all right. Two have objected, but they shut up after I said the price of raising it was buying my seat.

Anonymous says:

I’m a very frequent flyer, and I have to say that any airline hoping to pin their survival on restricting baggage or eliminating a bag of pretzels on a coke is doomed.

This is the only industry where every company tries to be the low-cost low-quality provider. Southwest is low-cost and beats most airlines on service and, say, not extorting money from passengers whose plans change. You can’t beat Southwest on price.

Now if a few of the airlines could just compete on service, I’m sure that they’d survive and flourish. Every other industry allows their weak hands to fail and go under; airlines should be no different, and a little less competition would surely strengthen the remaining companies in the space.

Filmo says:

the problems is that we don’t let airline fail. The perpetual cycle of bankruptcy prevents service, schedule, decent seats, etc. It’s a race to the bottom when the solvent carriers are competing with one or more bankrupt carriers at any given time. Ironically, when the bankrupt carriers come ‘out of bankruptcy’ they are then competing with previously solvent carriers who themselves fall into bankruptcy because of the previous ones in sort of a never ending merry-go-round.

Frankly air fares are artificially cheap due to too many carriers perpetually operating in bankruptcy.

people bitch and moan about cramped seats, fat passengers, and leg room (I’m 6′3″ so I know all about the leg room issue.) yet the same people have shown time and time again that they’re more interested in the lowest price than any of those things. Experiments in that direction have always failed as the customers aren’t willing to pay the extra 50 bucks for slightly more leg room or larger seat, etc.

ya get what you pay for. No shortage of leg room in business or first class is there? I can’t afford those either, but I understand why they’re more expensive.

As to how to fairly charge passengers based on mass, use the BMI. Each index is sex and heigh adjusted. However, if you’re going to charge more for BMIs above a certain number, you better be offering me a discount if I’m below the average as well. That said, I think charging by mass, while perhaps a nice libertarian fantasy, probably isn’t going to happen in the U.S.

Anonymous says:

Of course it would be easier for everyone if everyone looked the same, if everyone looked like they spent their life in a concentration camp. Unfortunetly as much as there is diversity in this world, a 100 years ago this diversity was a cause for a KKK member to cut off his own nuts and eat em. Let me tell you something, you don’t like fat people? Too bad. Cause I don’t like black people, Albanians, Greeks Americans or Jews yet I still look to them to give me alot of today’s life’s pleasures. If some self obessed skeleton likes to dislike fat people all the time, god forbid a nuclear snow storm hits New York or Los Angeles the fat people will survive it because they have all the fat to keep them warm, and no they won’t give you any of the fat. Of course you might force cutting it from them, but of course they will just sit on you and squish you. You have no chance. We win. Oh and just for the record, I bet the irony must be burning a thin poor person’s soul knowing that a rich fat person can get more sex than he can. Here comes the explination why and how it’s better to be thin and poor than rich and fat. Better to be a starving African child with AIDS than a fat American getting his penis sucked by 20 prostitutes while sipping orange juice sunbathing at a luxury hotel in Havana? Ok. Sure.