Uncomfortable travels

Although I, myself have never had to face an issue of obesity, I think it is time everyone accepts everyone else right or privelege to travel the same as anyone else!! I read many comments that said Those Who Suffer From Obesity, should be bumped off an airplane. Listen people, no matter what health issues a person/ has/has not, I think THEY should be allowed the same rights as anyone else, and if I (WE) think we are immune to such circumstances, then I(WE) are ignorant!!!! Cavemen attitudes went out long ago!! Treat Others as YOU would want to be treated if you were in their shoes!!!! Ahhhh.... I hear you now.....I wouldn't be caught dead that size.....but alas, if not you then a child of yours, or a disabled parent, don't scoff at people whom you have never walked in their shoes,...and if you have become an achiever and overcomer of a disability, then coodos to you!!! Try REMEMBERING when you weren't perfect???? The truth is:: None of US are!!!!

This is so flagrantly unfair! With all due respect, the vast (pun intended) majority of obese people find themselves in that situation as a consequence of their own actions. Tall people, on the other hand, have inherited their condition genetically and entirely through no fault of their own.

In truth neither tall people nor fat people have a "medical condition". But if we really have to make this an issue, then let's at least worry about those of us who are victims of fate - before catering (pun intended) for the gluttonous ones.

So sayeth the tall skinny guy...

The fairest method, but not necessarily the most appropriate or easy to administer, is to measure total customer travel weight including the cabin occupant and their baggage. As a tall, but slender, individual myself, I am angered when I occasionally get asked to pay overweight baggage fees when a significantly larger person beside me is about to travel with far greater weight and, on Air Canada, in greater comfort.

As a frequent traveler, I can say that more often than not flyers are of the average boy build and require only one seat. Why satisfy the infrequent & lazy, but yes sometimes 'disabled', traveler at the expense of your staple customers? Condoning one type of abnormal body type and not another is to invite criticism.

Not just airlines or car manufacturers 'discriminate'...
Hasn't it occurred to anyone yet that the present-day generation is overall taller and perhaps getting taller?!
The same type of 'discrimination' can be found in sizing of clothing and shoes : prices of goods in speciality shops for larger/ taller sizes have you "by the shorts" as it were, since you can't find the right size anywhere else, thus justifying their more expensive prices - let alone that their sale prices don't reflect those in the other ('normal'/ usual) stores either...

THERE IS TOO MUCH EMPHASIS ON REGULATION & RIGHTS.

Everyone seems to be be saying what should and should not be done. The civilised way to do it is:
(a) Tall people - be prepared to pay for a 2nd seat or premium seat
(b) Fat people - be prepared to pay for a 2nd seat
(c) Airlines (except Ryanair) - if you can, try to accommodate your customers
(d) Fellow passengers - if you can, try to accommodate your fellow tall/fat passengers

For (a) & (b), you don't ask Mini for a free upgrade to a 3 series BMW if you can't fit in it, right? You have to pay for it. And if you insist on buying a Mini, expect your knees to be knocked by the chap in front.
For (c), you don't tell your customers they can't buy a Mini but must buy a 3 series if they insist, right?
For (d), let's just be a little more human if we can accommodate other people. Of course, if we still need to recline our seats, recline them.

Then I am confident that 99.999% of all these problems will disappear.

An obese person can do something about their condition, but a tall person cannot, short of having their legs amputated at the knee.

As a shorter-than-average person with a BMI of 24, I feel that a proportion (say 50%) of an airfare should be charged by total (passenger + baggage) mass. The airlines could then have graded seating, with wider ones for the fatties and more legroom for the longies, while height-and-mass challenged people like me could sit in the cramped standard seats.

Maybe this would encourage the obese to diet before flying and would provide the tall ones with the legroom they need - at some extra cost. And it would encourage the Imelda-Marcos types to pack less before they fly.

Every study I have read indicates that it is short individuals who suffer height discrimination, not tall ones. In general, greater height is seen as advantageous by our society, and correcting for other factors, taller people earn more than shorter ones (especially males). If the case here is suggesting that tallness is, under certain circumstances, a negative, consider it nature's way of restoring moral balance to the universe.

At a scant 6'4" (193cm), I have been increasingly inconvenienced by the lack of room in economy class as I have grown older. This is not because I have grown more picky; I am certain that the amount of space has been shrinking over the past twenty years. And, people in front of me have definitely grown ruder about sitting upright to avoid hurting my knees. I think that this should cease by law. There should be international regulations requiring accommodation people whose weight or height makes them ill-suited for the normal seats. Surely, it couldn't be that difficult to create seats that are both safe and configurable such that people who are, say, 7' (215cm) tall and 350lbs (160kg) could be accommodated. Statistically, there should only be a small number of such people on any given flight. So, there needn't be a wholesale reconfiguring of the seating.

If obesity simply had to be treated as a disability (in order to pander to fattening electorate, perhaps?), then surely it is a MENTAL disability, not a physical one. I seem to recall there IS a flying RESTRICTION on mentally disabled (would YOU want to fly on the same plane with a madman?)....

Although of average size, I am constitutionally unable to fly economy class. This disability leaves me hungry and exhausted at the end of a 20 hour trans-pacific, economy class flight through no fault of my own. I therefore demand a business class seat at no extra charge.

So Johnson is too cheap to pay an extra $200 to be more comfortable on a transpacific flight?

Give me a break. That's less than five cents per mile. The headline should be "Cheap wanker refuses to pay for upgrade!" Better yet, this article shouldn't even be in the Economist.

On a recent flight - not with Air Canada, but with Tap Air Portugal out of Brazil - we had two fellow passengers of 2m next and behind us. They were indeed kind of stuck, and therefore demand the passenger in front of them (one being me) to keep their seat in the upright position during the whole flight. Note: not asking, but demanding. This was on an 8 hour overnight flight, basically asking their fellow passenger not to sleep. In the end it was resolved by the cabin crew by relocating one of the passengers and asking to other to stick his legs in the corridor. Problems with length and weight are not only a matter of inconvenience to the persons themselves, but also to their fellow passengers. Extra space should be provided, at extra costs, on behalf of both.

I'm 6'3".
A few years ago I booked a London-NYC return flight through a website; going out on Continental, coming back on an overnight flight with Air Canada with a stopover in Toronto. I first checked on AC's site: they say you can buy extra legroom. OK, I thought naively, I booked the ticket and contacted AC on the same day. It was my most frustrating discussion with customer services (what an oxymoron).
They said I cannot buy the extra legroom because I'm on a "Continental ticket", and I'm on a Continental ticket because it is the first company I'm flying with. I can't book it with Continental either.
Being an AC customer did not matter. I'm flying on their plane, they got my money. Doesn't matter, they would not sell me extra legroom at any price, because of the "Continental ticket". They did not run of the seats with extra legroom, just wouldn't sell me any. The only option I had was to upgrade to business, which I refused.
You can probably tell, I'm still bitter after all these years. Lesson learned ? Oh yes, I won't step onto an AC flight. Ever. Amen.

Gulliver,
Please check your facts. On Canadian airlines if you are disabled because of your weight, and you can get your Dr. to certify the same in writing, then the airlines are required to give you an extra seat without additional charge. This doesn't apply to people who are just big (or tall as you note).

Who do you think is going to pay for the free seats or extra legroom. Yes, those of us who are of a size that used to be average. This is wrong it should be the person of size, for whatever reason, who should pay.

Tall people cannot do anything to change their height (short of amputations, which may actually result from a DVT).
Fat people (with the sole exception of clinical obesity due to hormonal disorder) CAN do something to change their weight, and SHOULD BE ENCOURAGED to do so by exorbitant air fares for instance.
At least, make them pay the FULL FUEL COST of their fat a$$es...

Let me see if I understand correctly the reasoning of the Canadian Transportation Authority. Airlines must make special (no cost!) provision for people who take more room due to something which it is within their power to control*, but not for people who take up more room for something over which they have no control. And that makes sense why , again?

* yes, I know a tendency to obesity is in some part genetic. But sufficient obesity to require a second seat? That requires refusing to even try to control your weight. Especially in Canada, where you should be able to get something as drastic as gastric bypass surgery without having to mortgage your home (unlike the US).

Surely a disability is something which the person afflicted cannot change. For example, cerebal palsy...parkinson's...quadraplegia... (apologies for lazy spelling). An obese person merely needs to put down the fork. A tall person cannot simply cut six inches out of their height, nor go on a shortening diet. If anything, the tall person is more deserving.

As if all this weren't bad enough, here's another way airlines could make our short-haul and medium-haul flying experiences even less enjoyable:

http://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2010/10/worlds-smallest-airline-sea...

As a tall person, I have always wondered why people over some height level such as 6'4, or 6'5 shouldn't get priority seating - for example on a large widebody jet, there are rows of seats at the beginning of each section of seating which have much more legroom, and you could rearrange seating on aeroplanes so that there is a row of such seats on smaller planes too.

I used to be convinced that obesity is simply due to ingestion (i.e., eating) of more calories than the body consumes (i.e., burns off). But after reading a few books on the subject, and carrying out some experiments on myself, I am no longer convinced that is it such a simple link.

On the other hand, I don't think that any sane person would argue that a person's height is a result of that person's conscious choice to grow taller than the average height.

The airline is being stupidly glib when stating that the “fees [for extra space] start at $16”. This is irrelevant. This is like saying that the duration of flights starts at 40 minutes. It is true, but totally irrelevant to the discussion of Mr Johnson's story.

And to state that “a risk of developing a medical condition does not equate with having a condition” is a good reason to refuse him a seat without the extra fee runs counter to the argument for removing all peanuts from flights... On the one hand, some passengers are expected to accept the increased risk of developing deep vein thrombosis , and on the other the airline takes mitigating action to reduce the risk of allergic reactions.

Airlines should improve the comfort of all passengers: the tall, the short, the skinny and the fat.

Maybe this means that offering the extra legroom for free to the tall reduces their freedom to travel whenever they wish. Let's say that there are only four such seats per plane, so if four tall people have already taken those seats on my preferred flight, I'd be left with the choice of taking a different one.

E.