Chubs on Planes

Comment on a CNN article—I'm sure I'm gonna get some hate over this one ;-)

As a frequent international traveler, I admit that I dread being seated next to a person whose girth spills over into my space. On the other hand, I can appreciate that the seats are generally too small, both in width and in depth. I'm 6' tall, of average build, so I always have my knees in the seat in front of me. As such, perhaps the available width is unreasonable as well. (Furthermore, why are the armrests so narrow?! They're barely wide enough to put one person's arm on, much less share between two people! If the adjacent passenger is large, then by default you lose the armrest....) Thus both the airlines and passengers are culpable to some degree.

Personally, I advocate charging by weight of the passenger plus luggage. (I say this as a 195-lb male who tends to take a lot in luggage.) A 90-pound woman carrying only her 5-lb handbag shouldn't pay as much as a 300-lb man with 50-lbs of luggage. Clearly they contribute differently toward the fuel usage. (All eco-activists should be for this one, since it's clearly an incentive to be greener!) Granted other public transportation like buses and trains don't do this, but they're short hop (using less fuel) and have the need to quickly board and unboard passengers, making pay-by-weight impractical. For airplanes you already have to check in, and people already seem to be willing to give in to cavity searches to board planes, so why not step on the scale? Could it be that some people fear being weighed more than being rectally probed?! ;-)