Fatty here.
Southwest Airlines in the United States let’s you buy an extra seat, and then when you check in at the airport, they will refund the cost of the extra seat provided you are a “person of size.”
Being that the center arm rests go up, this makes it significantly more tolerable for both me, and the regular sized person who sits in the row with me.
A lot of the other airlines used to do this as well. Now only Southwest does… For now…
Airlines should be required to have seats that accommodate all body types rather than be permitted to squeeze seats so close that even people of average size cannot sit comfortably. Believe it or not people don’t choose to be disabled.
Why is people downvoting an actual unpopular opinion? I meant, you might have your opinion on the subject but the post itself is on point.
Because they’re offended 😂
Actual Unpopular Opinion: the core concept of this community is engagement bait for dummies
fat*
Lol exactly - in reality
Why punish the fat when being stupid is still free everywhere?
If you’re thinking of this, consider that those who buy clothes in XS have to pay the same amount as the XXL size for that same shirt or pants. Despite the XS garment being a third as much material and stitching.
Once you get above about XXXL, you typically have to pay significantly more to get a shirt that fits correctly in that size.
Not arguing, just food for thought…
That only works for some clothing. Usually by the time you get to XL the arms or legs aren’t proportionately wider, only the body, so the sizing often doesn’t really work. If it’s numbered sizes, above the regular range there usually is a premium price for + sizes, same as for petite.
The extra material and stitching you are talking about costs less than a US penny for any manufacturing process.
Why not both? Bigger seats and weight-based ticket prices!
The ticket should come with a total weight of the passenger and their luggage. If I’m skinny let me bring 70kg bags.
No.
Airlines should be regulated so the seats are larger and accommodate larger people.
And if you managed to fly before airlines were deregulated, then you know that this was once the norm and isn’t too much to ask.
You do know that tickets for those nice spacious old timey flights you’re dreaming of were upwards of thousands of dollars, adjusted for inflation, even for the cheapest seat on a domestic flight.
There was also far fewer planes, far fewer pilots, far fewer airports (infrastructure in general), and far less advanced technology. Prices fell way before they started cramping seats.
And did you also know that those old timey flights included check through baggage, actual food, rules regarding getting passengers to their destinations and a host of other amenities and important regulations that were thrown in the trash because we trusted corporations to NOT create a plane that requires you to stand up for an entire flight (an actual concept that was considered). And you know how when you search for a flight a few times, the price keeps going up? Conspicuously lacking back then along with paying extra for a seat with a window only to be told an actual window isn’t guaranteed. Yeah, there was no Internet, but it’s still true.
You can get pretty much all of things today. You just have to pay the same price you did back then, adjusted for inflation.
In the old days every single seat on airplane was basically economy/first class. There was no such thing as economy.
Passengers wanted cheese tickets, so the clas system was introduced to offer cheap economy seats, and now y’all complaining that the seats specifically invented to be as cheap as possible don’t offer the same amenities as the expensive ones.
You’re just reinforcing my point here.
That’s why airlines need to be regulated. It should be illegal to draw a profit while giving zero value.
The value is being transported from point a to b. How anyone with a straight face can argue that low leg toom is an airline providing “zero value” is a fucking mystery to me. Like do you buy plane tickets for the sole purpose of sitting comfortably in a flying tube for shits and giggles, with no regard to destination or origin ?
And also, THEY ALREADY DON’T. The profit margins on the completely basic, zero extras or add ons econeomy seat are ALREADY close to 0 for most airlines. Negative for some.
Right so, really the airlines should calculate the volume of a person and allocate a box of that size. When you get to your box, you have to fold yourself into it. If anything hangs out, maybe cut it off or just smash it in violently. Screw the bathrooms, just hold it or piss on yourself. Air conditioning and heating? Unnecessary. Think of the weight savings if the boxes were packed in like cargo. You wouldn’t need seatbelts. Maybe then those poor airlines that are barely eeking out a profit, might make money. We don’t need any amenities. I mean, did you get there?
Oh and if the airlines aren’t making money then that just proves that deregulation doesn’t work. They were the ones that lobbied for it.
The value is being transported from point a to b.
If you flew in the 80’s or 90’s, then you know how significantly de-regulation has affected the value of the product.
Frankly, you’re wrong, but you have a right to be. The problem here isn’t fat people, it’s rich people wanting to extract more money from passengers while offering nothing of value in return.
Have a great day.
Lemmy is extremely anticapitalist and still disagrees with you, does that not give you pause?
Not at all.
Our culture hates fat people and thinks being fat is a moral failing. This doesn’t surprise me at all, and it likely hasn’t even crossed most people’s minds to blame billionaire capitalists instead of fat people.
Nothing in this thread is about fatphobia. Literally nothing.
It’s simply about the fact that society can’t bend around every body type in existence. And yes, that sucks unbelievably much for people who ARE untypical bodytypes, and yes it’s enormously unfair but it’s more or less the best for a shit situation.
It’s unreasonable and impossible to expect everything in every circumstance, to be accommodating to every possible body type , at least not without having having a massive number of seats on every transport empty, because they’re reserved for people of unusual bodytypes, who are rare and therefore rarely use them. That would make prices higher for everyone, it would require more planes and busses an trains to be built and moved to accomodate the much lower number of effectively usable seats, which will lead to even higher costs, the networks will grid lock under the increased traffic, and the environment will suffer from all the extra airplanes that are now transporting far fewer pax per flight than before.
You can’t just blame the boogeyman for all your problems
Airplane manufacturers and airlines should stop maximizing throughput via smaller seats.
Actually, I prefer the tight packing. I wanna get from A to B, and have you seen how expensive tickets are?
They should really be using wide body flying/blended wings so the cabin is more spacious for the same max payload, but that’s a separate matter.
That being said, I think airlines should mix in a few spacier seats, for big/tall people, for a small, markup, and exclude all the business class extras.
Airlines already do this, premium economy. Usually the seats that happen to have more leg room due to the design of the cabin.
Ah I missed this last time.
I mean they do have some small number of seats with extra legroom, that you can pay upcharge for. Exit row seats, bulk head seats, premium economy, to a smaller degree simply choosing an airline with a more spacious configuration in their planes.
There’s already a solution for that. It’s called premium economy/business class.
And if you’re gonna say “but that’s so much more expensive”, well guess what’s going to happen if you reduce how many pax can fit on an aircraft.
Folks should not down vote him, the cost of flights considering inflation have dropped a ton over the years. Its comodetized and made highly efficient with cramped quarters and more efficient technology. If you want more room to fly old school it simply costs more…
https://www.travelandleisure.com/airlines-airports/history-of-flight-costs
"In 1970, a domestic round-trip flight from New York to Los Angeles cost about $150, which is equivalent to over $1,000 today when adjusted for inflation, while today the same flight averages around $300. "
Thank you, oh thank you, for selling the option not to treat me like cattle.
Dude. Larger spaced economy seats would LITERALLY be doing the same exact thing. There is no world where you get more space for the same amount of money.
Airlines already don’t make a lot of profit on economy seats, if any. It’s not like they’re price gauging you on the basic economy price. The majority of their profit comes higher classes, baggage and other service upgrades, and at least in America, credit card reward programs. Economy class by itself is already barely, if at all, profitable. Making it significantly more spacious will inevitably and without doubt lead to higher prices. And if you’re willing to pay those higher prices, we’ll that’s literally already an option today. The only thing you’re advocating for here is forcing literally everyone to pay that upcharge, even those that don’t want or need it.
It’s also bad for the environment. As uncomfortable as it is, stuffing as many people as you possibly can into one aircraft reduces the total number of aircrafts/size of aircraft required for a certain passenger number. Not that that’s why airlines do it of course, but it’s a genuinely desirable and positive side effect of the cramped economy seating.
Removed by mod
Way to demonstrate the intellectual maturity of a 5 year old. And since I don’t engage with random 5 year olds on principle, consider yourself blocked.
You did tho
That dude is mad lol
I’m not sure this is unpopular, even on Lemmy.
Someone else already said that they should stop making the seats tiny.
I feel like this is a fairly common opinion. Also, I believe they do have to after some point; not sure how the airline decides though?
Exactly.
And if you’re someone who has lost a lot of weight, and lived in the world of a fat person and an average-sized person, you know that very well.
Go by a golden corral and you will definitely find people who don’t physically fit in 1 plane seat
It’s got to do with calculating the amount of fuel for the plane. More weight requires more fuel.
Edit: I’m sure it’s also partly exaggerated capitalism, the companies want every dollar they can milk from the passengers…
I mean, mass is a massive factor for flight.
If you ever fly on a small plane, they ask your weight, and cap your luggage weight because they absolutely have to.
No it isn’t. Not in large airplanes. The typical takeoff weight of an A320 is in the neighborhood of 50-70 tons. The pilots do not give a shit if a few passengers weigh a couple 100kg more than the average, and that’s a narrow body. A couple PAX being grosly obese on a widebody, with typical takeoff weights in excess of 100 tons, is even more negligible.
Fuel calculations and weight&balance is calculated based on assumed average weights for men, women and children, generally something in the neighborhood of 85kg for men, 75 for women and 30-40 for children (includes assumed average hand luggage weight as well)
Why do you write entire books as a response but can’t write the word passengers?
You’re using actual reasoning, while dismissing my edit of corporate greed reasoning. You better believe, especially in capitalist USA, they’d just as soon charge you $10 a fart if they could…
I mean they literally DON’T charge you for extra cabin weight, or body weight, even if they could. Most airlines don’t even put weight limits on cabin luggage, only size limits. And even those that have weight limits, in my experience, very rarely enforce them. Generally, only size is enforced for hand luggage.
And they only charge overweight people double if they’re so large they physically block more than one seat, which imo is fine. If you need more than seat, it’s perfectly fine to expect you to pay for that extra seat. It has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with either excessive greed OR mass/fuel issues.
I won’t lie, I’ve never flown before in my life.
I only lived within walking distance of two airports, one of them an international airport, and the other lightweight airport flew their planes right over our house.
So I’ll pretend I don’t know anything if that makes you happy. Those of us on the ground learn the real rules when planes start crashing in your back yard…
Edit: This comment coming from someone that actually applied to refuel airplanes at the local international airport. No they didn’t hire me, they probably figured me as a corporate risk, as I had too much experience seeing planes crash, not too far behind our house.
Commercial jet liners are the safest mode of transport by a massive margin, and several orders of magnitude more safe than anything that is on a public road. If you start driving and flying at the same time, by the time you’ve encountered even a serious, much less fatal, incident in the aircraft, statistically you will have been killed dozens of times over in the car.
Don’t see you raging against buses or taxis here.
Wait, you got buses and taxis? Well fuck, after our horse died, I adopted bicycle riding and BMX flatland…
I’m tall and don’t fit in any seat other than an exit row. If there aren’t any exit rows should I be forced to pay for the seat in front of me?
I’m sorry you have to deal with that but it’s not really a good argument. For one, the airline can still actually sell the seat in front of you.
If a person is so large they physically block 2 seats, then that’s an extra seat that can’t be occupied at all, so it’s not really a fair comparison.
And ultimately, not every mode of transport can reasonably be accommodating to every single possible body type. I know that it sucks for people are stuck being an untypical body type and have to deal with nothing much fitting them, but what do you suggest the alternative should be ? Spacing seats out more just so the few very tall people can sit everywhere is going to increase ticket prices for everyone, even those who neither need nor want that extra space. It will also increase the number of flights required to move the same number of passengers, and therefore increase the fuel use per passenger and mile flown.
Yeah dude, corporations should be able to do whatever the fuck they want!
/s
I mean, look at it from the passenger in front’s perspective. They’re paying as much for their seat as everyone else presumably, and yet if you’re too tall to fit in your seat and your knees are pressed up against theirs for the whole flight, they’re having a considerably worse experience than everyone else. Should they have to pay as much as everyone else does, with that in mind?
People will always hate fats more than billionaires.
False comparison. No one mentioned billionaires. Two completely separate topics.
I can draw the tangent. Airline industry executives cut costs to make more profits including decreasing seat sizes and increasing number of seats. If they cared less about profit and went back to sizes decades ago, almost no one would be uncomfortable. They go on to tell us it’s about fuel economy and the environment while they fly their private jets.
There are no profits to cut on Economy calls seats. You seem to have no clue how airlines actually make their profit. And it’s not from economy seats. Those are already sold by airlines for virtually no profit. They make their profits from baggage and service upgrades, higher classes like business, and in the US credit card reward programs.
Making economy seating more spacious WILL lead to higher costs for everyone, because ther is no mentionable margin on the current prices.
Also, cramped aircraft are good for the environment. I’d rather everyone have to be slightly uncomfortable for a few hours than needing to spend 3 times the aircraft and cause 3 times the pollution to transport the exact same number of people, but in more comfortable planes.
Now that is a decent argument.
Really covering new ground with this one…
Fat people shouldn’t have to pay extra on airplanes, the assholes who don’t check luggage should.
I’d argue if you take up two seats , you pay for two seats
Good lord yes. Time to start charging for anything other than the first small personal sized item and maybe a laptop. Even when they tell people the plane will be overloaded and that they can check their bag for free, people won’t. Our last flight was delayed by 30 mins trying to get the overhead luggage sorted. Really wanted to heave the assholes luggage onto the tarmac and leave it there.
A lot of airlines do https://www.obesityaction.org/resources/to-buy-or-not-to-buy-an-extra-seat-2/
Wow — first seeing US Airways, and then later in the article Continental mentioned, lets me know that the page linked is wildly out of date.
I wonder if Pan-Am will make an appearance.
