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Your words were "height/weight proprtionate." Most adults Americans are overweight. Someone who is overweight is not height-weight proportionate.
And if they’ve put on that bit of extra weight on their hips and thighs (as many women are prone to do), they may not fit into a 17” seat. You do not have to be enormous to not fit in an Economy class airplane seat.
There aren’t many opportunities to upgrade these days. Lots of people want to do so, and believe it or not a significant percentage of the people in First today are flying on a paid ticket. There simply aren’t lots of empty seats in the First Class cabin available to give away as upgrades any more. The days when you could buy an Economy ticket and count on an upgrade moving you into First are long gone. Odds are that if you have an Economy ticket, you’re staying in Economy (even if you have lots of miles and and status).
You're right! My husband if a gold member for life on AA. He doesn't get many opportunities to upgrade.
Not really fair when you pay for a ticket and then get stuck between two people who take up more than their share of space.
Yep.
If you gorge yourself into extreme obesity, own that and its consequences.
If I were hugely obese I would feel bad for imposing this upon others, in cases wherein others were affected by MY poor choices.
However after viewing the vid I'll say she handled it in poor form; speaking audibly on her phone about it. Crass and provocative. Had she any class she'd have quietly requested to be reseated elsewhere.
A case of all three people being awful in different ways.
I think one solution would be for airlines to make people pay double if they take up two seats. That way, they don't have to worry about their seatmate complaining. If I were spilling over into someone's seat, I'd be apologizing to them. Seats on planes are smaller than they used to be but I still think until there's a solution for that, passengers should buy two tickets if they take up two seats.
Some airlines do. I know SW does. I'm not sure what the weight specifics are, but I honestly don't blame people for getting upset. You pay for a seat, you don't want someone else invading your space.
Fat, obese people should have to pay for 2 seats or upgrade themselves to a first class ticket. It's not fair for a normal size person to be wedged between 2 heffers.
Most companies will not allow their employees to fly first class. Not an option.
Mine doesn't either--or at least, they don't pay for it. This is how I do it. I know months in advance when work needs me to fly somewhere (so that helps). I start watching ticket prices months in advance too. When tickets go "on sale" I buy a coach seat on a flight with first class seats open with the company credit card. Then, I immediately call the airline and tell them that I bought a ticket at coach rate and want to upgrade to first class. I pay the difference with my own credit card.
Work doesn't care that I do this. In fact, it saves them money on checked bags and since I am waiting for a sale, I usually end up buying a lower priced ticket than my coworkers (who seem to like to wait last minute to buy tickets).
Because I do this months before I travel, there is almost always a seat to upgrade although there have been a few times when nothing was available. I have a business trip in 8 months and I've started looking for tickets for that. It looks like it's a connecting flight only with the connecting flight being regional with no first class option. So I will have to suck it up for that. The nice thing is, usually those flights don't have center seats and it's easy to get my aisle seat.
Some airlines do. I know SW does. I'm not sure what the weight specifics are, but I honestly don't blame people for getting upset. You pay for a seat, you don't want someone else invading your space.
You're right, some do. As we can see from this case, though, it's not an industry-wide practice.
For that, I blame the airlines. And this NOT a recent occurrence, either. They've had a lot of time to address this. I remember a horrific case from over a decade ago, in which a woman was jostled and plowed into by a morbidly obese passenger on an 11- or 12-hour flight, and the FA's wouldn't move her. She ended up so badly battered that she had internal bleeding and had to be hospitalized. The airline sent her a friggin' fruit basket. They ended up settling a suit for a paltry $15K or so (in U.S. dollars).
Airlines need to get busy. And passengers should start refusing to be seated between two obese riding buddies who are so fat they've decided not to sit next to each other for their comfort.
You can't be serious. Entitlement attitude? The contract for carriage doesn't assure or imply a certain level of comfort? Surely it does. Of course, that doesn't mean one is guaranteed to be free from every possible annoyance, but a reasonable level of comfort is precisely what one can expect when they purchase a ticket. Being squeezed between the two people in question, for 4 hours, is not reasonable by any measure.
It does nothing of the sort. I would have been similarly peeved.
Is it reasonable to expect that? Sure. Is it guaranteed? No, not at all. Is it reasonable to expect that a restaurant delivers the food hot, in a reasonable amount of time, and that it tastes good? Yes. Is it guaranteed? No. Does it mean you don't have to pay if it isn't? No. I reasonably expect that I won't have to wiat for my food at a McD's drive through. Sometimes, it doesn't happen and I have to pull forward and wait five minutes because they ran out of coffee.
Its 4 hours. Not a week. Not a year.
Quote:
Originally Posted by likealady
Geez, and this quote too:
United needs to fire whoever is giving them PR advice. If they "cared" about the safety and well-being then they wouldn't have punished the non-obese woman by making her wait for a flight the next day after what the couple pulled. Probably not safe to be stuck between those 2 in case of an emergency either. That said, people's flight manners these days are just horrible. I recall one flight CA > NYC, my entertainment monitor didn't work, I was somehow freezing cold despite closing the A/C nozzle, and the guy in the aisle seat of my row REFUSED to move his legs for me to pass to get to the bathroom halfway through the flight. I literally had to step over him.
At no point during any of this was the skinny woman's safety and well being threatened. Comfort? yes. Were the seatmates rude in their seating decisions? Yes.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ChessieMom
United Airlines: United has a strict policy for overweight passengers: if they can’t comfortably fit in one seat, they will be required buy another seat for each leg of their trip. If passengers don’t buy an extra seat ahead of time, they may be required to purchase an extra seat on the day of departure at the rate that’s set for that seat on the same day.
Clearly United did not follow their own policy here.
Define "Comfortably in one seat." Most airlines (Not United) say "If you can't put down the armrest and/or need a belt extender." They appeared to be able to do both.
The problem is the race to the bottom with prices and service. You can’t operate an airline profitably with the fares passengers are willing to pay without those 30” seat pitch seats and near-100% load factor. You jam all those people on equipment originally designed for 2/3 that number of passengers and you get eruptions in the economy section. The staff can’t do anything because the flight is 100% full.
Exactly. The public is getting exactly what they paid for: really cheap tickets. They are not getting what they did not pay for, namely, comfort.
I think the only way to stop the race to the bottom is to mandate increased minimum seat widths and seat pitches. Unfortunately I don't see that happening any time soon.
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They ended up settling a suit for a paltry $15K or so (in U.S. dollars).
