General Chat

Samantha Brick was on TV this morning. She Tweeted yesterday that she thought overweight people should have a "fat tax" on flights. What a thoroughly nasty woman she is.

Coincidentally she looked as though she had put on a little weight to me :-D :-D :-D

Hope she has trouble with her weight when she gets older. It's no joke battling the pounds .

I ruined my metabolism by almost starving myself being on a constant diet when I was younger

Edit had to sign in again to correct spelling

It does not seem fair that a child pays the same fare as an overweight person - perhaps there could be some method of "allowance" by weighing passengers with their luggage.
Liz

Isn't overweight a horrible word with the implication that there is some sort of right weight and those who don't attain it are sub- standard.

I am fat. Gloriously, wonderfully fat and what it has to do with anybody else I really don't know but if they have such a low self-esteem that they need to look down on somebody to make themselves feel better then I am happy to be of service.

Pick the bones out of that one Samantha Breezeblock!

I once had a flight where I was crushed so much by a large man sitting beside me, I had to spend the whole time almost pushed into the aisle. He was ok but I was definitely not! :-D

There is a problem for large/wide people on aircraft. As seats aren't wide enough they have to 'spill' over into the adjoining one.

An overweight young lady sat in the middle of a bank of 5 on a long haul flight, next to OH. He was unable to use his fully allotted seating space, and she spent the 11 hours leaning forward. Not at all comfortable for either of them.

Just as there are seats sold as having extra leg room for tall passengers, perhaps there should be some in economy for wider ones

If you all got fat you would all get the same good value as us.

This is pretty old news because it has already been introduced some time ago.

The biggest cost for airlines is fuel and the amount of fuel used depends mainly on the weight being carried so it makes sense to charge more, just like you pay more if you carry heavier luggage.

Samoa Air brought it in earlier this year and now charges according to the weight of the passenger.

As we fatsos are taking over the world we will soon all have to go everywhere by boat.

Think of the reduction in the carbon footprint then.

As aircraft very rarely fly at full capacity there is plenty of scope to fit fewer, larger seats in new aircraft.

Errol

I agree it is old news, but this women is a journalist and is so nasty and vindictive, she will use any subject to get attention. Not everyone chooses to be “overweight” my cousin has a medical condition called Myasthenia gravis. She is on so much medication and has no control over her weight. In the past she has tried to modify her diet, and has been supported over the years by her GP and consultant they have told her that if she came off the medication she would quickly lose the weight, but the medication will help to keep her alive. I have seen her struggle with her illness but she now accepts that she will always carry weight.

If that happened then prices would undoubtedly go up.

Airlines are not services or charities, they are profit-making organisations and so they will squeeze as many seats in as possible. They may not always fly at full capacity but they want the potential to carry as many passengers as possible.

For any airline, the important thing is not volume. The important thing is weight. That is what the whole thing is based on.

For example (and taking the full capacity out of the equation for now), if an aeroplane has 100 seats and needs to raise £1,000 to break even then it will charge each passenger £10.
If it then removed those seats and replaced them with 50 larger ones then the costs to passengers would double. Each passenger would have to pay £20 to raise the necessary £1,000 to break even.
However, if each of those passengers was twice the average weight then flying costs would go up and potential profit margins come down.

More realistically, any airline knows that it will very often not fly its aircraft at full capacity. However, costs are based on a "break even" point. In other words, the airline knows that it needs to fly at, say, 75 per cent capacity to break even at a given cost. Any additional passengers after this are profit. However, that 75 per cent is not just the number of bums on seats, it is also the weight.

As we big buggers are not going to go away soon it looks like something radical is going to happen to the passenger airline industry.

The clothing industry has had to rethink . We do have money to spend.

As we big buggers are not going to go away soon it looks like something radical is going to happen to the passenger airline industry.

The clothing industry has had to rethink . We do have money to spend.

Paula I am by no means suggesting that people choose to be "overweight" but this Brick woman is very behind the times because it is already happening whereby people are charged according to weight.

Samantha Brick. Another attention seeking waste of space, just like Kate wotsit off The Apprentice. Silly mares :-\

As someone who is approximately 5 stone overweight I have to agree with everything that Errol has said. Fuel is expensive and the more weight an airplane carries the more fuel is used.

Airlines are businesses, their main aim is to make a profit. If charging by weight means making a profit then that's what they'll do.

Samantha Brick is an idiot.

She even thinks she is attractive.

Anyone who is vain enough to state that they are is not......

A more serious version of what ButtercupFields suffered.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-143925/13-000-crushed-air-passenger.html

Given that more people are getting larger, for whatever reason, perhaps something will have to be done about seat sizes, with the increased costs that will, as Errol has pointed out already, inevitably follow.

Years ago OH got the dreaded middle seat on a flight from Los Angeles to Melbourne.

He's not fat. He's a big fella!

At that time he was playing lots of sport, mostly muscle. He weighed about 105Kg.

As I said, middle seat...... and he was the small one! He never saw the armrests, they were hidden by the rolls of fat the BIG men either side of him.

He was not a happy chappy.

:-(

While not wanting to get into 'weight issues' (I'd love to lose a couple of stone myself) :-(....having read the link to mail article, that passenger's flight sounds horrendous!

Virgin definitely at fault there, and their motto used to read "extra inches where they count"...? not now apparently :-|