Personally, I think that if someone requires an extra seat, they should pay for that extra seat. I don't think it's discrimination, I think it's common sense. People have got to realize once and for all that nothing in this world is free. Seats cost money. Let's say a customer wanted to have an extra seat to keep their carry-on bag. They didn't want it on the floor. It HAD to have a seat. Well of course the airline would charge them for the extra seat. So why should it be different for overweight people? Another example- if there are two identical shirts at, let's say, the Gap, but one is XS and one is XXXXL (I don't even know if the Gap has XXXXL, but let's pretend), 9 times out of ten, the XXXXL would cost more. Why? Because it required more fabric to make. Fabric costs money. Easy enough to understand; and I don't hear overweight people complaining about that. So why is there an uprising about paying for an extra seat? Again, it's common sense to me. Seat costs money- if extra seat is required, for WHATEVER reason, it will cost you.

So it's in the airline's interests to make the seats as narrow as possible, even if it knows that means they exclude a significant percentage of the population. Many people of average size find that the seats on many airlines are narrow enough and have so little leg room that they're very uncomfortable and cramped.

It's not a fair parallel to someone who, for some unknown reason, wants an extra seat for their carry-on bag. The carry-on bag can always go in the overhead locker, but someone who can't fit into a single airline seat has no choice but to pay for the extra seat as the airline demands or not fly at all.

To get to my point, the reason plus-sized clothing costs more than "normal" sized clothing is the same reason womens' clothing tends to cost more then mens'; the manufacturers see a demographic they can exploit, and they exploit them.

Back on the topic of airline seats, I have to say I agree completely with logic_grrl. It's all about profits.

That aside, I'm not sure how I feel in this case. Aria, I agree with many of the points that you made, but I think that clothing manufacturers mark up the prices on everything - not just plus size clothing. Is it not possible that the mark ups on larger sized clothing, for many manufacturers and retailers, are simply in accordance with their usual mark ups? In some cases, I think that's all it is. And, personally, I don't think that men's clothing is that much less expensive than women's. Anytime I go into a store that sells men's stuff exclusively, I'm always blown away by the prices. That's why I shop mostly at the second-hand store a block over from my apartment. A couple of weeks ago, I got 2 pairs of pants, 2 ties and a radio for $18 (like $11 USD).

I realize that Southwest is probably a Big Evil Corporation and all, but think about tiny airlines that fly, say, in Alaska, or Canada's arctic. Every seat matters to some of those folks. And in those cases, it surely isn't the fault of the airline that the plane they happened to get a good deal on has small seats.

Even in the case of Southwest and Delta, and so on, it's either the individuals that will pay for two seats, or it'll be everyone on the plane, who'll pay, when the airline is forced to install bigger and fewer seats. I can't afford to take planes as it is, and such a scenario would only move air travel further out of the grasp of a whole segment of society like me.

It has. I agree with Aria: unless clothing prices go up for say, every two sizes, marking up over one certain size is ludicrous. As someone who has sewn all her life for myself and others, if I use a pattern for my size, and then go to adapt it for a friend who is several sizes bigger, I end up using less than an extra yard of fabric, at the very, very most. More often, we're talking 1/4 to a half a yard, which is all of a couple bucks and I'm paying retail for fabric, not wholesale. I'm also not paying people in third world countires two cents to sew it for me. Ahem. And having worked in retail (oh, so many, many years ago), I assure you that the markup is not at all in accordance. When the clothing comes in, wholesale, it doesn't cost more for one size or another.

Given we truly have made not just being fat, but being reasonably sizedin many cases into a disability, I'm not sure I get why adding say, seats for the wheelchair bound isn't an inconvenience we'd piss about (and I certainly don't think we should), but giving extra room to those who need it is. Used to be this sort of thing would be common courtesy with people and businesses -- if someone needs more room or is uncomfortable, you do what you can kindly to help them be comfortable. Being fat, for most people, isn't like opting to carry an extra bag or not. The great majority of people are the size they are due to their genetics (standard medical stats as I recall show that only about 10% of obese people can change their body radically via exercise, diet or meds long-term -- same would go for very small-framed people deciding to try and hit 300 pounds).

I don't like flying either. But some of why I don't like flying is that now and then there is a fat person next to me, or a pregnant woman next to me, whose body is literally spilling over unto my seat, and for which they usually feel they have to apologize the whole time, which is just a horrible thing for anyone to have to feel who has paid their fare like anyone else, and having the person next to me be that uncomfortable -- physically and emotionally -- makes me uncomfy too.

I don't think it's an issue of fairness to evertone. I think it's an issue about capitalism and about discrimination when you can get away with it.

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Heather Corinna
Editor and Founder, Scarleteen

My epitaph should read: "She worked herself into this ground."
-- Kay Bailey Hutchinson

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Originally posted by logic_grrl:
Hey, think about this: who decides how wide the seats are? The narrower an airline makes its seats, the more seats it can fit in; the more seats it can fit in, the more passengers the plan can carry, and the more money the airline makes.

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Except that the width of the seats falls within regulated guidelines. When US airlines were deregulated about twenty years back, all the rules that the US government imposed on them were supposed to go out the window. But there were a few safety concerns that led to some regulations being retained. Mandated onboard fire extinguishers, a pre-set number of emergency exits, and "coach class" seat dimensions were some of the rules that were kept.

Contrary to popular belief, the dimensions of seats has not changed over the past thirty years. Seats themselves have become stronger and are made differently, but their width has not been altered by Big Bad Corporate America to suit the bottom line. Legroom and aisle width has most definitely decreased in that pursuit, but this is not a case of "let's screw heavy people in our attempt to get rich."

I can see why this is a hot-button issue, and my guess is that this will eventually wind up in court somewhere. But the fact of the matter remains that there is a relatively small portion of the population that has a need to occupy more than one seat, and I just don't think it would be right to have everyone on the aircraft pay for it.

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"Task Force 46, Light Force 34, Engine and Rescue 66, Battalion 3, Division 2; respond into the Greater Alarm Structure Fire at San Pedro and Jefferson. Reported to be a fire at the First Alert fire extinguisher factory..."

Here's my point- plain and simple- if you require an extra seat, you pay for the extra seat. That's all there is to it. I'm sorry if that hurts people's feelings or it makes overweight people feel "discriminated" against- but the fact is, that no matter who you are, or how big you are, NOTHING IN THIS WORLD IS FREE. That's just how it is, and I see nothing wrong with it either.

quote:

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Originally posted by BruinDan:
But the fact of the matter remains that there is a relatively small portion of the population that has a need to occupy more than one seat, and I just don't think it would be right to have everyone on the aircraft pay for it.

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Exactly. I mean, y'all do realize that if these people are getting a "free ride", it's not actually free- the rest of the passengers are paying for it. Maybe you people are missing something. Seats cost money. No matter what. Doesn't matter if it's empty. It costs money. And there are no free rides in this world.

Ya know, I'm done with Scarleteen. It's been fun, but I can't stand the mentality that we should make exceptions for people JUST because they're overweight, or JUST because they're black, or whatever. That's the kind of thinking that leads to crackpot ideas like affirmative action. I think it's ridiculous. Wake up, people. Life isn't always fair. Deal with it. And I'm gonna just go right ahead and say it, since I ain't comin back... if you require two seats, that's your problem, and we shouldn't have to pay for it. And I don't wanna hear that it's genetic, or that it's glandular, or any of that stupid crap. If you're fat, fine. I don't have a problem with fat people. I personally think it's an unhealthy way to live in many circumstances, but it's your choice. (Yep, it is a choice. There are tons of options. You don't have to be fat if you don't want to.) But just because you're fat doesn't mean that you deserve a free ride.

Now, if SWA is in any way interested in offering good customer service, then they would gladly allow their larger passengers to take an extra seat without the additional charge. Otherwise, the passengers will just graviate to jetBlue or America West (all American domestic commuter airlines). Such is the beauty of market competition.

quote:

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Contrary to popular belief, the dimensions of seats has not changed over the past thirty years. Seats themselves have become stronger and are made differently, but their width has not been altered by Big Bad Corporate America to suit the bottom line. Legroom and aisle width has most definitely decreased in that pursuit, but this is not a case of "let's screw heavy people in our attempt to get rich."

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Thanks for the info, but I think my point still stands. Seat dimensions, even if they haven't changed, have been set at a size which excludes a significant proportion of the population. And the decrease in aisle space and legroom has exacerbated the seat situation by ensuring that there isn't any spare space for people to extend into.

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But the fact of the matter remains that there is a relatively small portion of the population that has a need to occupy more than one seat, and I just don't think it would be right to have everyone on the aircraft pay for it.

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Try it the other way around: why should a certain percentage of people have to pay double in order that the rest of us should get the cheaper tickets made possible by greater numbers of smaller seats? Why should they have to subsidize our cheap tickets?

Y'know, when I buy a plane ticket, I don't think of myself as buying "a seat" (if I just want to sit down, I've got chairs). I'm buying transportation: a ticket to ride . I'm skinny, but I don't get a cut-price ticket on the grounds that it costs less jet fuel to get me somewhere - I pay a standard fare. So why should someone who weighs more have to pay extra?

At last, something I can talk about intelligently!!!

First off - I worked at BA on a placement in hte finance department for six months (yes - I was there over 11/9, scary...), so can talk from experience...

Airlines have huge fixed costs (and I really mean huge). But the variable costs from having a person on board are tiny, as the plane will have to fly no matter what (even if empty - return flights (and they'll lose slots if they don't use them)). One extra person won't really change fuel consumption, and meals are fairly cheap. Even from first class to economy - practically no real change. The premium classes are where they make money, economy loses money(or just about breaks even) - the high first class prices get them the money, but economy is needed to maintain reputation, visibility etc.

Effectively therefore, one extra person in a seat costs nothing, but goes towards negating the fixed costs of flying which would be there anyway. Bums-on-seats are needed as much as possible - if someone is making it that a seat can't be used, then they should pay for that seat, as otherwise they cut out an income stream wihtout reducing costs.

This applies to big airlines as well as the smaller ones (although airlines such as Go/ Buzz etc have different business models and can make money on economy class due to older planes etc).

Umm.. that went on longer then I'd planned - but basically, I think people should be made to pay for seats they make unusable to others, to avoid depriving the company of revenue and stop others subsidising this with higher prices. (spoken like a true management student, hehe).

Finally, logic_grrl, you wrote that people who pay to get on a plane are paying for the transportation, rather than the seat. Well, I disagree. Until airlines start operating like public transit where a fare gets me transportation (which could be standing or sitting) then I'm paying for a seat. It's just like when I go to a sporting event, or the theatre. I'm almost always assigned to a specific seat in the stadium/auditorium, and I'm always assigned to a seat on a plane.

How big should seats be? There's always going to be someone bigger, even if the problem is merely fitting through the door of the plane. How many people is it okay to alienate? 1% of the population? 0.1%? 0.0001%? There has to be a standard somewhere, and whether that standard hurts 1 person or 1 million people is irrelevant. No standard will be good enough for everyone.

Legally, a plane ticket is a contract on transportation, not a contract over a specific seat or a seat anyway. Sure, it's part of the transportation contract that you get to sit on a seat, but the main thing the contract is about is getting you from a to b.

Secondly, overbooking is a bad practice and really has little to do with this issue. If someone books two seats and needs two (no matter whether (s)he only pays for one) and you need one but the plane is full: where is the difference to two people occupying the two seats and you not getting a seat? Fail to see that.

Thirdly, I do not think it is irrelevant whether 1 person or 1 million person are discriminated against. Yes, it is impossible to always accomodate everyone, but if a significant portion of society is severly hindered (and from the numbers of obese people in the US, I think you we are talking about a significant part of society) I think some amendments have to be made.

As a solution, say one row of seats on planes would get wider seats for the needs of fat people, how many seats on the whole plane would get lost? Two or maybe three. Like said before, the losses from these two seats less on the plane would be minimal, as -like stated above -airlines make their money in the executive classes.

These wider seats should be able to be seperately booked to be occupied by those who need them - pregnant moms, big folks. Should they not be needed on any given flight, let people "upgrade" to them: Everyone loves some space for their bums, no matter how big or small the bum is.
Would be great marketing for the airline, too.

Like Heather posted, from experience I can say that it is terrible to experience a flight next to someone who feels terrible for using up a lot of space. Not because i really need that left armrest or don't want to be next to fat people: its uncomfy to sit for a couple of hours next to someone who excuses constantly for not being able to get their bum in their seat and feels terribly guilty about not fitting in.

Flying is uncomfy enough, and while wide seats wouldn't solve all problems (flight loos are so small that even tiny people have problems in them), they sure would make life easier for many.

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Caro
~Scarleteen Sexpert~

I'm also, as I said, reluctant to make something that's out of my league already, more out of my league. However, I can understand why your ideas are good.

Make one row of first class be coach by moving the super-special curtain of economic prosperity up and leaving a row of those wider seats for wider people, sick folks and the like.

Easy as pie.

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Heather Corinna
Editor and Founder, Scarleteen

MizScarlet's solution was something that my friend and I kicked around yesterday. But he brought up a big point: Southwest does not have a "class" system in their aircraft. They offer only economy class seats as a price cutting measure that allows them to lower their fares for each customer. So they would have to change their entire business strategy a little bit to make the accomodation. With this as the case, I can see why they are so hesitant to make a change that other airlines most likely wouldn't flinch at.

But the benefits of this change could potentially outweigh the consequences. This plan has drawn all sorts of fire, and the free market usually dictates that people will flee from companies that they find distateful. By reversing themselves and adopting one or two rows of "human size" seats, Southwest would look better in the eyes of consumers, which certainly can't be bad. And the fact remains that there is a sizeable market for people who would be interested in those seats, so outwardly it seems to make sense from a marketing standpoint.

I think the biggest reason that I started to change my mind on this issue this morning was from a statement I read in the LA Times. It quoted a Southwest managerial employee as stating that there is "no set standard" for people who would need to purchase the second ticket (which, incidentally, would cost about 1/3 the price of the normal seat price). The employee went on to say that it would be up to the "discretion of the ticket agents" to enforce the policy.

That just about did it for me. When you start getting into using "discretion" of ticket agents (these are the same people who shipped my bags to Abu Dhabi instead of London/Heathrow) to judge who needs two tickets and who needs one, I throw my hands up in horror. If it is going to come down to a judgment call based upon the way a person looks to a ticket agent, I can't really see that as a good idea at all.

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"Task Force 46, Light Force 34, Engine and Rescue 66, Battalion 3, Division 2; respond into the Greater Alarm Structure Fire at San Pedro and Jefferson. Reported to be a fire at the First Alert fire extinguisher factory..."

From what I read, the Ticket agents will not get weight and height requirements to follow when determining who can comfortably fit into one seat. That's fine with me. - How terrible would it be to have to weight in at the ticket counter or get your bum measured?

one thing that struck me as troubling was that one indicator the ticket agents should consider were the need for an extender belt and whether the armrest could comfortably be put down. i.e. everyone who needed a seat belt extender would be required to buy an extra ticket. from what i read today, that could easily hit pregnant women, too.

In any way, I think Southwest Airlines really didn't quite consider what bad publicity this has been. They apparently already had some bad rep with some Fat Activists (Grandstyle: What Airlines treat Fat People well?).

For those of us who can't quite imagine the things one has to consider and worry about when you're big and wanting to hop on a plane, check out these tips on travel comfort.
Grandstyle: How can I make traveling on an airplane more comfortable?
Grandstyle: How to find roomy coach seats (this actually has a chart that shows that on the very same type of plane say a 727 there can be differences of 3 inches (!)in seat width depending on whether there are 5 or 6 seats in one row. apparently, not all seats on planes are created equal.)
NAAFA: Airline Tips

from NAAFA:

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TRAY-TABLE - If you cannot bring down the tray-table, have the flight attendant ask the passenger in front of you to put their seat to the full upright position for mealtime. If this doesn't help, set a pillow on your lap, and your meal tray on the pillow.

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Stuff like this makes you realize that it's inhumane & terribly unfair to not offer suitable space on an airplane to a large group of society, just so they can travel in dignity and comfort, too.

Personally, reading over this hasn't done much to change my opinion from what it originally was. S'no matter.

In my opinion, she should have to pay for the extra seat.

For those 10 percent Miz S. mentioned, it is manageable. One of the girls at my school, she's my kinda-friend (we don't along much) went to a doctor recently to see why she was obese. It wasn't too hard for us to tell. She'll sit there, does NO exercise at all, and downs fried chicken for very meal, amongst other unhealthy stuff. And the doctor told her that. She doesn't believe him. I'm not one for always believing docs, but hey I'll try anything once. TRY cutting down your fat intake, see what happens. It might just work.

But that's besides the point.

I'm a pretty small gal. If I want clothes that fit nice, I generally have to go to a specialty store, or get the store to refit them all nice. I have to pay extra for that. It's not just big people who have to pay extra for clothing. And I take LESS material.

Southwest Airlines bases its business on "no-frills." You're lucky if you get a bag of peanuts and a Coke on one of their flights. The airplanes are old, and they aren't very cushy, no matter how skinny you are, and there is no such thing as "first-class" - all the seats are pretty dinky.

HOWEVER, the trade-off for that is often being able to get tickets as low as $89 one-way. And the planes are rarely if ever late, and there has NEVER been a fatal accident of a SWA flight.

Now, it is true that this is bad publicity for SWA. They might have dealt with this in a more understanding way. But to keep their flights as cheap as they are, they need to fill those seats, and giving seats away to people who need to occupy more than one is not the way to do that. The cost IS going to be passed on to other passengers. It is unreasonable to ask the airline to donate a seat which might have been used for a paying passenger.

Personally, I'd prefer none of this were an issue, because in my happy utopia, I think airline travel should be like bus travel: we all pay the same buck to ride and take what seats there are, with accomodations for those who need them.

But this is not my happy utopia.

As a note, NO ONE can tell why a person is or isn't a certain size by looking at them, be that size big or small. Lots of very thin people get no activity and eat junk food. Lots of fat people work out daily and eat in ways so healthy it puts the rest of us to shame. Lots of each of the other do the same things. While certainly we can see how someone's habits may or may not contribute to their size and shape, it really is only that: contributing factors.

Again, people are the size they are for LOTS of different reasons, the great majority of which -- in EVERYONE -- is genetics. If we're not fooling around about wanting to work for acceptance of all bodies and people, we have to start by dropping assumptions and midsets that we have clear evidence are likely, or patently, fallacious.

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Heather Corinna
Editor and Founder, Scarleteen

My epitaph should read: "She worked herself into this ground."
-- Kay Bailey Hutchinson