Should obese people have to pay for an extra airplane seat?

@saab,

saab wrote:

I kind of remember that someone told me that in the very beginning of passengers´flight person plus luggage were weighed together. ..........

Saab - that was back when logic wasn't overwhelmed by delusional political correctness: btw, wondering about the tag "dehumanizing" somebody added to the original "obesity" tag on this thread, I searched for this word combination and discovered that in the minds of some people obesity and humanity are incompatible. This was the first result for "obesity dehumanizing" found by the search engine:

Quote:

...You see the emotional wreckage of such a path in Hector's own bloated carcass of a body. The dehumanizing obesity of the character is the outward scar-tissue of inward emotional death.

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2007/01/the_history_boy.html

Incredible - sounds like neo-Nazi propaganda, where some humans aren't worth as much as other humans. I'm sorry to see we have such a member on A2K - as presumably only members can tag threads here. Andrew Sullivan (who wrote the above excerpt) is no neo-Nazi, I hasten to add, which makes his thought association even more puzzling; anyone here able to explain it?

1 Reply

@High Seas,

PS Even more incredible - fat bloggers also feel they have to explain to the airlines that they, too, are human:

Quote:

...I'm tired of the airline industry and the fashion industry and the media telling me that the problem is me and my body and that I should just change and everything will be okay. My body is not the problem! Your complete denial that there is any body type other than model-thin is the problem. .......... I am not an anomaly. I am not "other". I am a valid member of the human race...

http://www.bigfatblog.com/united-airlines-and-upside-anger

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@High Seas,

I could easily guess that some a2ker felt dehumanized either by some comments or the issues involved in the discussion, and chose not to post.

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@ossobuco,

Thanks, Ossobuco. I still don't know how anyone can feel "dehumanized" though - less than human? Not human at all? Why?

Unless you were referring to Sullivan, not United Airlines. Still at sea Smile

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@High Seas,

No, I wasn't referring to Sullivan nor the airlines. I just know people can feel very sensitive about these issues.

I don't think I've weighed in here on my own opinion.. since I haven't quite worked it out; I've been listening.

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I'm not sure, but, playing the devil's advocate, there could be some logic to saying that if someone takes up two seats, they should pay for two seats and get two, regardless of the reason.

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@Brandon9000,

A famous Dane always bought two tickets when he went to the theatre, one for him one for his walking stick.
He probably would have done the same when flying except he had his own airline. Guess he did not have to pay for any flight.

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@Brandon9000,

One time flying home, I spotted a woman with a cute little doggie. After talking a bit she stated she always buys a seat for her dog - that way he is kept in his carrying case, but she knows he gets to sit next to her instead of some where they store pets.

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@Linkat,

And that also prevents some lecherous beast from sitting next to her and grabbing her...wait a minute. That wouldn't happen.

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@ossobuco,

Ossobuco - many people are sensitive about being too tall or too short, or having pockmarked skin or barbed-wire hair, but you never hear any of these conditions preceded by "dehumanizing". Sensitivity cannot, therefore, be the issue.

Unless either the pesky troll(s) who entered the "dehumanizing" tag here and are marking posts up / down - as if that made the slightest difference to anyone - speak up to explain these weird activities, I'm inclined to think Sullivan hit upon a profound truth.

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@Brandon9000,

The devil being the laws of physics?

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@High Seas,

I have large feet (for someone on the small side) - I am very sensitive about that I even had a shoe salesman say I had long feet. I guess that was supposed to sound better than large feet.

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@Linkat,

That's fine, but did it ever occur to you (or to anybody) to call your shoe size "dehumanizing"? That seems to be the problem with "dehumanizing obesity", to quote Sullivan again. Maybe the whole of his paragraph is true. But I do know that an article someone else linked on another thread just now, entitled "Fatties cause Global Warming" can't possibly be serious Smile

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article2387203.ece

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@High Seas,

Edit, the last item is actually based on an article in The Lancet, most respected medical journal in the world. Sorry didn't make this clear before:

Quote:

Dr. Phil Edwards and Dr. Ian Roberts of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, writing in the new issue of The Lancet:
"............................................ Compared with the normal weight population, the obese population consumes 18% more food energy. Additionally, more transportation fuel energy will be used to transport the increased mass of the obese population, which will increase even further if, as is likely, the overweight people in response to their increased body mass choose to walk less and drive more.

Urban transport policies that promote walking and cycling would reduce food prices by reducing the global demand for oil, and promotion of a normal distribution of B.M.I. [Body Mass Index] would reduce the global demand for, and thus the price of, food. Decreased car use would reduce greenhouse gas emissions and thus the need for biofuels, and increased physical activity levels, would reduce injury risk and air pollution, improving population health......"

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@High Seas,

I was joking - but in reality the salesman did say my foot was long. And I am very concerned about what sort of shoes to buy for them as a result.

As far as the article is concerned - people are also getting much taller than they have in past years - the average height has gone up; that also could contribute to global warming.

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I was curious as to how the airlines themselves address this on their websites so I found a very insightful one on southwest.

Here is the Q&A on it - http://seniortravel.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?zi=1/XJ&sdn=seniortravel&cdn=travel&tm=124&gps=489_1140_1268_411&f=00&tt=12&bt=0&bts=0&zu=http%3A//www.southwest.com/travel_center/cos_guidelines.html

And they address the issue of the ADA by responding:
Doesn't your policy violate the Americans with Disabilities Act or the Air Carrier Access Act?
Interstate airline travel is specifically excluded from Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) by Section 12141(2). Airline travel is instead covered by the Air Carrier Access Act, 49 U.S.C. 1374(c) and the regulations implementing the Act issued by the Department of Transportation as 14 CFR Part 382, et seq. The Air Carrier Access Act (ACAA) preceded the ADA, and Congress excluded air carriers and other air transportation services from the scope of ADA. As regulated under 14 CFR §382.38 Seating accommodations (i) "Carriers are not required to furnish more than one seat per ticket or to provide a seat in a class of service other than the one the passenger has purchased."

And for the Guidelines for Customers of Size (yes that is what they call it):
http://seniortravel.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?zi=1/XJ&sdn=seniortravel&cdn=travel&tm=124&gps=489_1140_1268_411&f=00&tt=12&bt=0&bts=0&zu=http%3A//www.southwest.com/travel_center/cos_guidelines.html

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@Linkat,

Linkat - quite apart from the specific case of the airlines, overweight people cannot be covered by the ADA because that would bring up the number of "disabled" Americans to 2/3 of the population; remember we have millions of truly disabled persons (blind, paralyzed, insane) already. But on your statistics, height hasn't been increasing - we're becoming shorter as well as fatter.

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@High Seas,

According to the CDC we are taller. Average adult Americans are about one inch taller, but nearly a whopping 25 pounds heavier than they were in 1960, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/healthcare/a/tallbutfat.htm

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@Linkat,

You're looking at old statistics, Linkat. Later data shows the opposite on height:

Quote:

An article by Paul Krugman, published in the New York Times and entitled "Long and short of it is that diet counts for a lot", points out that a recent statistical survey found that Americans are shrinking in height as they grow ever broader. Researchers John Komlos and Benjamin Lauderdale published a paper in the Social Sciences Quarterly which reports that Americans who once were "tallest in the world between colonial times and the middle of the 20th century" have now "become shorter (and fatter) than western and northern Europeans."

http://www.health24.com/dietnfood/Weight_Centre/15-51-2954-2955,41147.asp

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@High Seas,

Actually what this article is saying is that Americans are shorter in comparsion than other countries than the used to be. For example, Americans used to be among the tallest compared to other countries, but now other especially European countries are actually taller on average than Americans.

I was speaking to how people in general are taller than they were say 100 years ago.

1 Reply

Should obese people have to pay for an extra airplane seat?

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