Ask any regular flier and they’ll tell you the only thing worse than airplane food are the seats.
No matter how thin you may be, airline cabins are just too small. Flight attendants have to squeeze through the narrow aisles, legroom is non-existent, and the bathrooms are like closets.
And when you’re sitting on a plane with an empty seat beside you, and an obese person boards, the first thought in your mind is probably “please don’t sit next to me.”
Purchasing a seat on a flight is like buying real estate – a well-defined space, where the arm rests act like borders between properties. Any infringement on that space feels like trespassing.
In an interview with CNN, Brandon Macsata, executive director of the Association for Airline Passenger Rights, was quoted as saying “(in airline seats), we’re crammed in like sardines, you don’t have to be a fat person to be uncomfortable sitting in those seats.”
At approximately 17 inches on average, an airplane seat doesn’t give you much room, even if you’re below average weight.
So, with nearly 34 per cent of American adults classified as obese, and 68 per cent considered overweight, it seems unbelievable that American airlines still refuse to put regulations in place to accommodate the obesity problem.
Southwest Airlines says passengers should book a second seat if they can’t lower both armrests. American and United Airlines use three tests: inability to fit into a single seat, put the armrests down, or properly buckle the seat belt with a seatbelt extender. If you can’t do all three, you’ll have to purchase a second seat.
For airlines, like any other business, profit is the bottom line.
Before the recession, airlines were posting profits with planes at 70 percent capacity, and had less of a problem accommodating passengers who needed an extra seat.
Now though, airlines are trying to cram as many passengers as possible into one flight in order to make up for higher cost of fuel.
The latest incident in the ‘too fat to fly’ argument involves American filmmaker Kevin Smith, who was removed from a Southwest Airlines flight last month. Southwest said Smith was too big to fit in his seat, causing a potential safety hazard. Because the flight was full, he was pulled off the plane.
While Smith can afford to purchase as many seats as he wants on his next flight, however, not all obese people can afford to pay double the fare for their tickets every time they fly.
Do smaller passengers get a discount for taking up less space? No. So why should larger passengers pay more?
But people seem to think they should. On message boards, there are were a lot suggestions such as: overweight passengers should be charged more because they use up more fuel, they should be forced to buy two seats every time they fly, or they should just lose weight. Very few people want to put responsibility on the airlines to change their policies.
A survey last month by website Skyscanner found that 76 per cent of people believe airlines should charge a “fat tax” to obese customers.
“Obesity is really the last frontier for acceptable discrimination in our society,” says Dr. Robert Dent, who established the Weight Management Clinic at the Ottawa Hospital.
“Obesity is a chronic medical condition based on genetics, but it’s really not looked at in that way. We make modifications in our society for other handicaps, so why not this one?”
Dent has been studying the genetic causes of obesity for over 10 years, and says that the reason that 25 per cent of Canadians are obese is because of the way society functions.
“In this society, we don’t have to be physically active to get to work or anywhere else because of technological advances,” he says.
“We should technically all be fat, but some people aren’t because they have good genes.”
The good news at least, for obese Canadians, is that the Canadian Transportation Agency set a regulatory ruling in 2008 that meant airlines had to offer a free extra seat to certain disabled and obese people.
The CTA looked into the issue after receiving complaints from obese people who ran into problems when they were trying to travel, says senior communications advisor Alexandre Robertson.
Since then, Canadian airlines have had to offer a ‘one person, one fare’ policy to disabled people who require room for an attendant or wheelchair, or for people who are clinically obese and require more than one seat.
WestJet spokesman Robert Palmer says the policies are working and about 90 per cent of applications received by those seeking an extra seat due to medical obesity were approved.
But Canadians don’t only fly on Canadian airlines though.
As well, just because someone is not medically ‘disabled by obesity’ as the policy requires, doesn’t mean that they don’t break the ‘safety’ regulations and have to purchase a second seat for sheer comfort.
The most ironic part of this whole thing is that there is not one American airline that offers anything like Canada’s ‘one person one fare’ policy, despite the fact that the United States is the most obese country in the world.
What airlines really need to do is make bigger seats, period.
Maybe they won’t be able to fit as many passengers on a flight.
Maybe they’ll slip a little in their profit margin, but all their customers – big and small – would certainly be happier.