It’s winter, the nights are getting longer – and people are getting fat. This is not only a traditional Bavarian experience, based on many years of consumption of Adventsplatzerl, but also a finding represented by the very un-Bavarian, but nonetheless well-recognized Federal Aviation Authority of the United States (FAA). According to the FAA, at least the average American is so off the hook that the aviation regulator assumes that customers will weigh more passengers in winter. That’s why the “average weight used for 2019 was significantly increased,” as stated on the aviation news portal aero.de called. That is also really important in terms of cost calculations: the airline United Airlines has to be on Boeing-type flights, for example 757 leave six seats free by April 30th so that the whole plane does not sag because of the winter fat of the passengers.
At the latest, you are theoretically right in the middle of the question that the industry above the clouds has been dealing with for a long time: Who is now paying for the six unused seats? All passengers, whether fat or thin, proportionately together, as is usually the case? Or just the ones who recently ate too much Thanksgiving turkey?
Michael O’Leary, head of the low-cost airline Ryanair with Trumpist traits, made the rather unbalanced contribution to the debate that nobody wanted to sit next to a “really fat bastard” on board. He was surprised by the number of customers who want to tax corpulent fellow travelers. In the meantime, all airlines that have wanted to ask particularly strong passengers to pay more are aware that even in the pre-Christmas period, which is characterized by gluttony, it is not possible to sneak around this topic light-footed enough.
Alone the announcement by Uzbekistan Airways that they simply wanted to weigh the passengers to determine the average weight of the travelers acknowledged the picture once with the words: “With this airline moppel pay extra”. The mini airline Samoa Air introduced a system in 2013, according to which the fare was calculated based on the total weight of the individual passengers including luggage. According to media reports, even some of the victims described the procedure as fair. Samoa Air was dissolved just two years later.
The values published by the FAA are interesting in this context: the US aviation regulator assumes an average weight of 93 kilograms for male passengers and 84 kilograms for women, including hand luggage. With which the associative framework for a second message is tense. British Airways recently revised its “Haircare, Beauty and Accessories Policy”. From now on, crew members may wear make-up, nail polish or a three-day beard – regardless of gender. With so much new gender awareness, a debate about whether women should pay only 84/93rds of the fare for men in the future would be kind of heartbreaking.
As a lightweight at the airport, Dominik Prantl always wonders why his suitcase is weighed so precisely and declared as excess baggage.
(Photo: Bernd Schifferdecker (Illustration))