Southwest Airlines has announced it will begin this week charging “persons of size” for two seats if they don’t fit comfortably in one.
How fat do you have to be not to fit comfortably in coach? And who gets to decide? A plus-size woman who is two axe handles across the beam may not fit as well as a narrow hipped man with a paunch the size of Texas. Although Paunchy could make it impossible for the person in front to recline his or her seat, his slim hips wouldn’t likely encroach on his seatmates.
The airline says its ticket agents won’t be bound by height and weight charts, but will have to make a judgment call on who must buy a second seat. How this will work, they cannot tell us, when most tickets are purchased by phone.
“Are you sure that you will fit comfortably in one seat, Sir? If you are deemed grossly overweight, we will have to charge you for an extra seat.”
Or will they size everyone up at check-in, just before the security guards do their pat down? Talk about embarrassment.
“Sorry, Ma’am, you do not appear to fit comfortably in one seat and will have to pay for two.”
Outraged “persons of size” will be suing for defamation, pain and suffering (beyond that caused by narrow seats).
Advocates for the obese have taken issue with Southwest over what they say is blatant discrimination. I’m not making this up. There really is a group of folks called the Council on Size and Weight Discrimination, determined to spare the corpulent from humiliation and financial hardship. Its president, Miriam Berg, stepped immediately into the breech, asking if Southwest’s ticket agents would also charge double to basketball players who are too tall to fit comfortably in the 16 inches of leg room.
I can’t imagine Shaq buying a coach seat on Southwest, but of course this could apply to lanky high school and college players not yet pulling Laker salaries.
Berg says the airlines have the obligation to make their seats fit the population. Given recent statistics on the blimping out of Americans, she may have a point. We, as a people, admittedly are growing more rotund each year, thanks to fast food behemoth burgers, fatty fries and gulps that would choke a hippo. A Quarter Pounder with Cheese Extra Value Meal (which actually costs less than the same burger with small fries and drink) weighs in at 1,380 calories. And you don’t even have to get out of your car to get it. Are advocates for the adipose going to demand bigger bucket seats to accommodate drivers whose bucket is uncomfortably confined? Where will it all end?
The health danger of obesity was taken head on by Marty Markowitz, a hefty Brooklyn borough president, who put himself and his area constituents on a diet recently. When he learned that Brooklyn had more deaths from cardiovascular disease than the rest of New York City, he stood on a scale in front of Borough Hall to kick off his “Lighten Up Brooklyn” campaign. More than 7,000 people joined him, recording their weights at stations set up in 150 churches, drugstores and gyms. We hope this doesn’t cause all those great Brooklyn delicatessens to go belly up, so to speak.
The skinniest airline seat I ever endured was on AOL, a cheap charter serving Paris, Tahiti and L.A. At 125 pounds, I was squished into what felt like a second grader’s desk chair for about 10 hours. Fortunately, everyone in my row was French and took up no more space than I did. One plus-sizer in a window seat could have tipped the balance sending the aircraft into a tailspin.
Southwest reportedly changed its policy after conducting a study, which found that many large passengers failed to purchase two tickets. This forced average size people to pull their arms in close to their sides, making it impossible to eat their one little packet of nuts. Big Beefy, meanwhile, was spilling over both arm rests, actually taking up half of two other seats for which he didn’t pay.
On flights where seats were not reserved in advance, my friend used to start coughing and sneezing when someone of size started down the aisle in an effort to discourage them from taking the seat next to her. She said this ploy was successful most of the time.
Anyway, with rotundity running rampant, what we need is a campaign to aid the airlines in their quest for parity and fairness in ticketing.
Ads could show a portly gentleman willingly paying for his two seats, then actually using only one and a half seats, giving his seatmate even more room. The ad could be accompanied by a catchy song about how the fit and trim save their health and their money for extra seats.
“Fat people got no reason to fly; Fat people … ” Where’s Randy Newman when we need him?