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Should airlines charge you by your weight?
With all of the cutbacks and extra fees in the airline industry over the past few months, it's difficult not to think about weight on an aircraft per passenger. That's why airlines unilaterally increased baggage fees earlier this year -- more weight requires more fuel which is makes the flight more expensive to operate. If you can encourage passengers to pack lighter or less, the carrier will save money.But what if airlines charged by not only the weight of the luggage but also by the weight of the passenger? One analyst consulted by the popular world and economics website Bloomberg has ventured into the uncharted territory of charging by passenger weight. Robert Mann, aviation consultant at R.W. Mann & Co suggests that it's the "next logical step", given that airlines are basically treating passengers and their luggage alike as freight.
So you would step up to the ticket counter, weigh your checked luggage, send it away then weigh yourself and your carry on to determine your ticket price. You and your luggage weigh 200 lbs? Your ticket is 200$. You and your luggage weigh 300? 300$.
Admittedly, the article speaks with another aviation consultant, David Swierenga, who points out how unrealistic the idea is -- and since Bloomberg is a careful media source I imagine they didn't elaborate on purpose.
Why would this idea never work? America is overweight. We would FLIP OUT if a policy like this was ever adopted, the airline in question would get the pants sued off of it and the carrier would be dead before it even started. It's not too hard to portray "charging by weight" as "discrimination against overweight people".
Airlines will just have to keep coming up with other crafty ideas to make profit until jet fuel returns to normal. Stay tuned for the next ridiculous fees that they come up with.
Reader Comments (Page 4 of 4)
Sheryl Dec 30th 2008 12:50AM
The airlines should most definitely charge fat people as the weight on the plane drives up fuel consumptions thus fuel costs. I weigh about 120 lbs. On a recent flight, my bag was over the limit by 2 lbs and the airline wanted to charge me 50.00 to check it.! Mind you, the two men in line behind me both were over 250 pounds each and they each had bags, but they didn't get charged because their bags were only 49 lbs. This is such nonsense. I put on 172 lbs total on the plane and they put on about 300? Almost double? I'm paying for them NOT for me! It's really crap. That's weight discrimination, I tell you. Making me pay for them.
Passenger X Nov 2nd 2009 7:14AM
I strongly oppose the idea of charging overweight passenger or require overweight passenger to purchase another seat. Doing so is very unfair to the overweight passenger.
The only solution is "buy 1 get 1 free". Means that when a passenger booked for a flight, another seat will be given free if found that he/she is overweight.
The airline can has a policy that passengers must provide weight details during flight booking.
For the loss faced by an airline company, sorry, this is none of passengers' business.The airline must serve the customer well even when facing losses.
Those airline company should feel lucky because I am not the member of government in any country. Else, I will surely implement the law, stating that all airline companies flying in and out of my country may let the overweight passenger reserve two seats but must ONLY charged the price of 1 seat, while another seat will be free.
breckrealty Jul 5th 2010 11:55PM
Yea that's not likely to happen. They were already in financial trouble before the fuel hikes, so now they want to squeeze the consumer by trying to charge by a person's weight. I think that if they do that, they will just put the last nail in their airline coffins. Those of you making snide remarks because you are so thin and think that only overweight people should pay more are dumb. If 70-80% of Americans are overweight or obese and the airlines decide to price based on weight, it won't work. Heavier people will stop flying. Then the airlines will be forced to charge even more fees to cover the money they will be losing by running off all of the overweight passengers that refuse to fly under ridiculous weight based fares. 30% or less of Americans can not keep the airline industry alive, they need anyone who wants to fly that is willing to pay a fare. So suck it up and face the hard facts, thin people are not the majority of Americans that travel, therefore you lose on your
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