chubby on airplane pays double ??

[AKM]

Ohkay, a few things...

 

1.  Many pilots call passengers "self loading cargo".  Sorry folks.  The purpose of an airplane is to move things from point A to point B at a profit.  It's all cargo, weather you have to be nice to it or not, weather it breaths or not.

 

2. Aviation is the second most heavily regulated industry in the U.S. after nuclear power.  One of those regs has to do with the (supposed) weight of individual people (passengers), and like it or not, weight is a major concern.  Yes, folks, there's a point at which all that extra weight will add up, the wings can't produce enough lift to counter it, and the thing won't get off the ground before running out of runway.  Results (if not caught in time) tend to be bad (and firey).  Needless to say, the regs, last I checked, have not kept up with the propensity for people in this country (U.S.) to be overweight.  Hence all the hoopla about airlines wanting to start weighing passengers... so they know what the plane weighs, not what they think the plane weighs based on the use of outdated calculations from the regs.  Major difference.  Possibly a lifesaving one.

 

3.  An airline seat is a perishable commodity.  Once the plane leaves the gate, they get no money for it.  If they can't put another passenger in the seat next to somebody because that somebody's too big, then yes, by all means, make that person pay for the extra seat, no matter how little of it they actually use.  They don't like it?  No problem, there are plenty of other forms of transportation.  There's the door.

 

4.  Airliners are designed to specific standards.  Yes, there is some leeway (like one airline that boasts an extra so many inches leg room due to reduction in total number of seats on the plane), but remember that as an operator, the more people you can squeeze onboard your airplanes, the more money you can potentially make per flight, hence the relatively skinny seats.  Also, despite what I said ealier about too much weight ending in a firey crash, there has to be a LOT more weight than one barganed for for that to happen.  There are many tolerances in aircraft design, and hopefully, most are "over-built".  But what if?  What if you just happened to have that one airplane that was built to absolute minumum specs across the board... and then weighted it down with a bunch of overweight people who were far and beyond what the regs said their accepted weight should be?  Add to that a hot, humid day (airplanes don't like hot, it reduces the lift the wings can produce), and you have a recipe for disaster.  A highly unlikely scenario, but nonetheless entirely within the realm of possibility.

 

5.  The current state of affairs in the airline industry can, in large part, be blamed on the end consumer, the passenger.  People don't want to pay as much, and then complain when amenities are taken away.  Fuel and maintenance isn't getting any cheaper, so if you want a cheap ticket, costs must be cut elsewhere.  Airlines are businesses, and must compete with others, just like any other business.