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Point - Counter Point: Airlines Charging by Weight

Posted June 27, 2008 at 12:01 PM by Martinique Haller

Section: Her Health, Body Image, Her News

The concept of charging people more money to fly based on how much they weigh is a heavy issue. In this article, Martinique Haller argues that there is no way this can be carried out reasonably. In the companion article, Lindsay Hutton sides with their airlines and frames the idea as a necessary evil. Read the articles and then leave a comment letting us know what you think!

Should you have to weigh in before getting on board your flight? It’s true that a heavier plane means a heftier price for gas, so does that mean that heavier passengers should account for this? According to a June 3rd story on bloomberg.com, ”Airlines may start treating passengers as freight” by Michael Janofsky. Janofsky discusses the different cutbacks that airlines are making to save on weight, “Singapore Airlines Ltd., whose shares have fallen 8.9% this year, is “trying to eliminate unnecessary quantities of extra water” to save weight. If they’re cutting back on water, he says, asking passengers to weigh in isn’t far behind.

I’d like to weigh in on this issue myself. Before you start assuming that I’m worried about my own girth setting me back before a flight you should know that my height and weight are well within average, and I have a BMI of 22 which the government ranks as ‘normal’. (check yours here). I don’t think private companies should get to decide what size a body should be and ask people to pay extra if they don’t meet their standards. I wouldn’t want to pay more for being short or tall, for having long legs, or for having a prosthetic limb. I anticipate your rebuttal! You’re thinking, “Being fat is preventable!” while reading in outrage. Yes, it is for the most part preventable, but does that mean we have the right to tell people to stop being fat because they can and we think they should. If you’re pro-choice or think it should be illegal for parents to keep their critically ill child away from a hospital to pray for them instead you should agree that no one should get to make decisions about someone else’s body.

Now you’re thinking, “But in this case, being fat costs me more!” Here lies the problem – if you’re 6’2” and within the normal weight that means you might be 175 pounds. That’s almost fifty more pounds the airline has to lug around for than for me even though you’re ‘normal’ weight. The logic follows that you should be paying for that weight, too, and that I should pay more than your teenager who should pay more than her five year old sister.  Let’s take the weight of that five-year-old (35 pounds) teenager (110), me (130), a fit, tall, guy (200) and the person we’re up in arms about (350) and use simple math, add ‘em up and divide by five.  The five of us average out to 175 each.  It evens out. If it evens out, why gun for fat people? We need someone to blame for rising fuel costs, don’t we? And it’s easier to discriminate against fat people than anyone else these days.

Yes, fat people (I use ‘fat’ as I do ‘thin’, as an adjective not as a pejorative) can lose weight, but should they have to? There are fat people who are proud of they way they look, the size of their body, the curve of their hips. They’re as proud as you at your best. Some aren’t, but some are and what right is it of an airline company to tell them to hate themselves? And to do it because we’re mad about fuel costs is perverted at best.  Should they have to be a size that is determined by someone else? Shouldn’t people be allowed to determine their own body size? It doesn’t seem fair to say - you must pay extra because you don’t fit our ideas of what the human body should be.  Will we tax pregnant bodies, or since those are acceptable bodies in this culture (most of the time) will we have another scale for them? I hope, that when we’re trying to move forward in loving all kinds of people that we’d be able to set our judgments aside and let people make their own decisions about their own bodies and not look for a scapegoat for a much larger problem.

Her Active Life would like to state that these are the opinions of two writers and they don’t necessarily reflect the views of this site. We support all women, regardless of body size, activity level or any other factor.

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Tags: airlines, bmi, charged for weight to fly, controversial, cost of flying, current events, fat tax, martinique haller, women's health

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