Fly Next to a Fat Person, Get $250
BFBer Marita posted a forum topic about a column, the Travel Troublehooter, concerning a passenger on a Delta flight. Like many of us, this passenger found the seat she was in to be pretty uncomfortable. When she asked if she could upgrade to first class a flight attendant told her all of those seats were full. Oops. The flight attendant jokingly suggested she find a "cute boy or girl" and sit in that person's lap. (Inappropriate!)
She felt this wasn't acceptable. After all, she was entitled to be comfortable on the flight, right? Sure. She wanted a refund and Delta refused; the Troubleshooter took care of things and got her a $250 voucher.
We've probably all been in a situation where we've been uncomfortable on a plane - the things just aren't comfortable unless you're doing First Class all the time.
But here's the rub: the voucher went to a thin passenger seated next to a fat one.
...maybe it would be more accurate to say the XL passenger next to you got a deal on her ticket -- two seats for the price of one. Either way, it's wrong -- and the attitude of Delta's flight attendants and customer service representatives didn't exactly help.
I think what gets me in this situation is that if that fat passenger asked for a voucher due to her discomfort, it's Pretty Darned Likely that Delta would laugh it off. Or maybe give her some drink chits or something. But crap, $250? I'd be surprised if the fat passenger wasn't in just as much discomfort - and I'm guessing she didn't get compensated. I'd really, really be interested in hearing the other passenger's story.
Look. The airline industry is never going to do more than the required federal minimums - their margins are too thin right now. But something is very, very wrong when there are so many people flying with some level of discomfort - and there's something even more wrong when some of them are being rewarded with vouchers. It's unfair, it's discriminatory, and it's just not right.
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Posted by paul on February 10, 2008
Oh, gawd. This actually reminds me of what happened on a flight with me, a few years back. My brother and I were flying out to attend our grandmother's funeral, and we noticed that we did not, in fact, own all the seats in our row. After squishing so far over that we were in intense discomfort, and giving the third passenger in the row as much space as she could possibly need (as much as she would have seated next to a thinner fellow passenger). She badgered the flight attendants for free things, citing the fact that she had to "sit next to a fat person" being an atrocity against her flight.
I was so tempted to stop the Flight Attendant, and ask, "Hey, can I get free stuff too, for having to put up with this b****?" I didn't, but I WANTED to.
I would have... matter of fact that's going on my list of things to do should the situation ever arise.
As long as we continue just sitting there with our heads bowed in shame (from their point of view) not saying anything it's never going to stop. A plane ticket doesn't promise you comfort of any kind. All it promises is that they will find some way to get you from point A to point B and that part of that trip will be spent going at very high speed through the air. The airlines don't want anyone to realize that of course... because then they'd have to do something about it besides let people continue to blame the current universal scapegoat.
So -YES-. Next time any fat person is on a plane and the person fated to sit next to their fat ass starts bitching... say something. Anything. Get mad about it too. If she/he doesn't want to sit next to a fat person and gets special treatment for it, then my demands for special treatment for having to sit next to their whiney ass should be met as well.
I agree wholeheartedly. The experience was a few years ago, back when I was still moralizing food, hating myself for being fat, etc. I was still in the frame of mind that I should in fact, bow my head and not say anything.
Same thing happens today? I'll complain about the offensiveness of the woman to the flight attendant, and ask that he or she NOT cater to such stupid demands. If there's any question about my comfort, I can remind them that the seats are designed much too small for ANYone's comfort, and that unless they want to start providing genuine comfort for everyone by widening the seats just a BIT, they shouldn't apologize to the special snowflake who's clearly suffering more than anyone else.
^_^ Or, at least, something along those lines. Trust me- I don't shut my mouth about those things nowadays.
The worst offenses towards me on planes has been from the flight attendants. A couple of years ago, I purchased two seats on a Northwest flight. The flight was nearly full, but there were three vacant seats - two in the row across from me, and the 2nd seat I had purchased. There was a family of 3 on standby, 2 adults and a small child. The flight attendant actually had the nerve to bring the family on the plane and then practically demand my 2nd seat. She said, "Well, she's just a small child, there's room enough for both of you." I said, "Will I get my money back for the seat?" When she replied no, then I said, I was sorry but no, the 3rd seat would not be vacant. The mother of the child was horrified that the attendant actually did this and kept apologizing to me, but the father was pissed. He yelled at me and told me that because of ME, they would have to wait 4 hours for another flight. I yelled right back and said, "No, it is because of this attendant who LIED to you and said there were 3 seats available."
Later on when it was time to pass out meals, the flight attendant yelled out to me, "just because you paid for 2 seats, doesn't mean you get two meals." I yelled right back, "I never asked for two meals'
I took it up with NW and received a bunch of frequent flyer points, a phone call of apology, but no written letter, which is what I really wanted. Trust me, if I had received the written letter that I asked for, I would have publicized that to the max.
I've personally used Chris Elliott, the travel troubleshooter, for a past travel-related problem I had. I'll try to minimize the gross-out factor, but we encountered bedbugs in a room reserved by my sister. I complained to the hotel staff in the morning but they wouldn't give me a refund. Later, I had to go to Urgent Care and incurred some medical bills as the result. Both the hotel and its parent company refused to reimburse me for either the room or the medical bills. After Travelocity ignored my email, I tried calling them and was literally on hold for more than an hour before the line disconnected.
Within literally an hour of Elliott contacting Travelocity, I had an email promising a refund of the room. And after he contacted the hotel chain, the same PR woman who before refused to get involved, called me personally to see how they could make the situation right. I also had the hotel manager - the one who had blatantly ignored me for two weeks - call me and he cut me a check exceeding my medical costs.
My point is: Chris Elliott gets results. I wonder had the fat person written to Elliott and he had taken up her cause, if she might not have also gotten some kind of credit from the airline. I also think the airline's response and generous refund was due, in large part, to the insensitivity and rudeness of its flight staff.
I swear to gods, one of these days, people will understand that a ticket is a carriage agreement, and not rental on cubic footage. Even my fat-friendly friends don't get this one.
My family has a tough time with this one. We're rectangular people---very tall, and broad. Add that to most of us being varying degrees of overweight, and it makes traveling more than 2 hours on a plane a *virtual nightmare.* I've had spasms in my legs, and in my calves, and I worry about deep vein thrombosis. But hey, since the seats are designed for my petite, slim counterpart, my discomfort means nothing but the fact that my thigh is slightly too close to their seat is met with compassion.
This is like my beef with the T in boston. The seats are a decent size, but there's no room between them, so they end up being, at the end of the day, quite narrow. Anyone with a tall, broad frame will find their butt overflowing the seat, even if they're "normal" weight. You should see some of the looks I get, like I'm being personally offensive for just SITTING DOWN. People will sometimes even get up (though not often), not before giving me a dirty look that reads: "OMG, FATTIE MCFATTIE SITTING ON THEIR LAZY ASS THEIR THIGHS ARE TOUCHING MY THIGHS OMG ILL CATCH TEH FAT!"
Like observed above, when the seats are so small even "normal" and some thin people are uncomfortable, why is there such an outrage when someone of even mild overweight (esp. when it's stored in the butt and thighs, where most of my fat is) has to put the armrest up? It's not like we WANT to touch you. It grosses us out just as much as it grosses YOU out.
$250, huh? Funny, all I got from United was $100 when, thanks to its colossal screw-up, I missed my flight (or, more accurately, they refused to let me on the flight because "the plane is on the tarmac. It's not GOING anywhere, or anything, but it's actually here, unlike your flight from Vegas until an hour and a half AFTER it was supposed to leave, which is what got you in this mess in the first place"). I had to wait SIX HOURS for the next flight. Ironically, Denver, midpoint on the journey, was only a FIVE hour drive from home and if I'd known I was going to get jerked around, I would've driven in the first place.
After I complained, I got $100 voucher "because transportation was provided."
OK, then, why doesn't the same reasoning apply for this lady on Delta? The plane got her where she was going. In fairness to her, I don't get an anti-fat vibe from her, but I definitely do from the guy who's answering her question. It seems like a common attitude: that people just get fat to deliberately squish their fellow travelers, so make 'em pay, bwahahaha! We recently had somebody write a paper here in the state, complaining about United's new charge off $25 for extra bags. He whined "what about all the fat people?" and reasoned that if they were charging extra for baggage weight, United ought also to charge extra for people weight.
Well rebelle, if that's true, then if we're really going to be consistent we should create a sliding scale, where the thinner you are, the less you pay. Even get rid of the whole child fare concept, and have it based wholly on weight (so that a fat kid has a higher fare than a thin kid. Hey, he takes up more space, right?).
In order to enforce this, we should require everyone to register for a federal height/weight/BMI monitor, and assigned a bar code which can automatically be scanned in order to ascertain their real-time stats (taken regularly, every time they step on a scale in a restaurant). That information will also be printed on their driver's licenses and passports.
Gawd, this could be a THIN post lol
Why do I get the feeling that segregating people by weight has only just begun with the proposal of that (thankfully killed) Mississippi Bill, not ended?
BigLiberty, my first thought was 'don't give them any more ideas'! But then the sort of people who can dream up fitting width restrictors to the supermarket snack aisle and putting obesity helpline numbers on the labels of bigger clothes (two of the UK's more extreme but as yet unimplemented proposals) are perfectly capable of coming up with their own.
On the airline thing, it seems to be the fixed widths of the seats causing the problem, and thin people being unhappy about allowing their fat neighbour to raise the rest and take up part of their seat.
One solution may be to have some of the rows of seats in a 'bench' configuration as was the case in older cars, with say the centre two armrests in a block of three seats able to slide laterally to allow the adjustment of the seat width.
This would allow a skinny person to sit next to a fat one and still lower the armrest (thus protecting them from touching the fat person and catching their OMG!!ICKYOBESITYFATZWTF!111!) And it would allow a fare to be charged for carriage rather than on the proportion of a seat available to the flier.
OK, so I'm no expert, and no doubt this plan would fall foul of some FAA regulation or other. But it's surely not beyond the realms of aeronautical ingenuity to come up with a solution to this problem that would allow accessible and comfortable air travel for all.
Of course the current arrangements give the haters one more thing with which to attack fat people so I can't see the will being there to find a better way. But as average weights increase and the airlines realise they're alienating thin and fat customers alike they may be forced into a rethink.
"One solution may be to have some of the rows of seats in a 'bench' configuration as was the case in older cars, with say the centre two armrests in a block of three seats able to slide laterally to allow the adjustment of the seat width."
This is a good idea, but I'd bet they'd still find something to bitch about... We have bench seats on short-distance train, and when I used to commute to Milan every day, I often ended up sitting near a fat gentleman who commuted on the same route. Needless to say, between the two of us, we took up most of the bench.
One morning, an average sized woman got on the coach we were on and spotted the itty bitty free piece of the bench that gentleman and I were sitting on. Of all the places in the train, she decided that she just had to have that particular bit of bench. Please note that a ticket on those kind of train does not entitle a passenger to a seat, but simply to being transported from point A to point B. So the woman proceeded to sit on the corner of the bench and started actively shoving her body against the gentleman, who in turn couldn't help bumping into me. It happened two or three times and each time he said very courteously to me "I apologize, Ma'am" - clearly hoping that woman would take the hint, and I, hoping the same, answered each time saying it wasn't his fault. After the fourth shove he turned to the woman and said, still politely "Ma'am, there's no room for all of us to be comfortable on this bench. Maybe you could take another seat?". And the woman started screeching that no, she wasn't taking another seat, that bench was a three-place seat and so it had to seat three people and it was her right to sit there if she wanted. Still keeping his temper in check, the gentleman told her "Very well, but you need to take into account the size of the people already sitting on it", to which she reacted by leaving in a huff. After she had left, he turned to me and apologized "for involving you as well when I mentioned size, Ma'am". I told him that he had simply told the truth and there was nothing offensive in his words and no need to apologize.
Sorry for being longwinded but I essentially wanted to say that if someone wants to gripe or "teach the fatties a lesson", they'll find a way to.
At risk of being flamed, I'm still going to question how you determine that airfare corresponds to carriage and not a particular seat, or some combination thereof. I consider my purchase to be both carriage, and the occupancy of one seat in whatever class i happen to be buying. Unless I'm flying Southwest, my airline ticket has a seat number on it. I don't think it's an unreasonable expectation that if my ticket says seat 19A, I and I alone will be occupying seat 19A. At minimum, everyone should get the full use of one seat. If someone needs two seats, then there needs to be some way of designating that in the system, so that person is alloted two seats and the second seat does not get sold to anybody else.
sso, I think I see what you're saying...but a ticket or boarding pass is only a representation of a complete contract of carriage, which is what you actually buy when you buy a ticket (you can view the complete wording of these contracts on most airline websites, such as Southwest's here - with its infamous "customer of size" policy - or United's here).
The seating stuff, whether assigned or not, is just the way the airline executes the contract of carriage. With the exception of Southwest's policy which defines allotted space by the ability to lower both armrests and fasten the seatbelt (along with the phrase "encroaches on adjacent seat area")...there aren't specific dimensions tied to most carriage agreements.
In fact, were it not for safety reasons, airlines wouldn't necessarily be obligated to provide seating. Train and bus tickets are also carriage agreements, and there's no guarantee of a seat with most train or bus tickets (as far as I'm aware, anyway).
The fact that airlines continue to reduce seat widths as Americans are supposedly getting fatter has always baffled me. I've always wondered if airlines do this so as to subtly "encourage" anyone with a girth wider than a computer keyboard to purchase double-seating in the name of comfort, thus ensuring additional seat sales for the ailing airline industry.
Just a thought.
Rachelr, maybe, but unless and until I can have a double-wide seat without an arm rest digging into my back during a six-hour flight, I will NEVER buy two seats no matter how fat I get. I'd just as soon WALK.
Southwest specifically defines a passenger ticket as "provid[ing] for the carriage of the passenger occupying a single seat." United defines a flight as oversold when "more passengers hold confirmed reservations than there are seats available." In both cases, children under two years of age who do not occupy seats are not charged for carriage. This all this indicates to me that the contract of carriage does in fact contemplate the occupancy of a (at least) a seat's worth of space per ticketed passenger. Not so?
I'm really not trying to be difficult, but I would definitely be displeased if I had to share my seat space with someone and I don't think it would be fair for anyone to expect that I do so. If someone truly needs more than one seat, then two seats should be reserved for them.* I don't think that would be the case often enough for it to have a financial impact on airlines, and it would improve the comfort of all parties involved. Though I'm certain some people would whine about it, the same people would whine anyway if forced to share their seat.
*I'm not really sure how one would institute this...maybe a checkbox when you reserve the flight indicating that you require two seats, and to prevent abuse, a caveat that if you check this box and you do clearly fit in a single seat, the second seat will be taken away.
I think it's wonderful that you fit into those little bitty (to me) airplane seats with enough wiggle room to have to worry about not wanting to share. I'd probably feel the same way if I could fit in them too....
Except the accountants (or whoever) working for the airlines are pointing out to them, "More people are fat than not, if you start charging the fatties for two seats, people -will- stop flying unless absolutely necessary and we'll be bankrupt again only even worse. We can't afford to redo all the planes with bigger seats. That'll cut down on the amount of seats and lose us money. Just let 'em complain and duke it out in the travel sections. It's free advertising!"
So I have to disagree. If someone truly needs more than one seat... then the seats should be bigger, not, "just charge them more for taking up 'too much' of our too narrowly defined space."
And the airlines should wake up and realize that the fatties won't keep their blinders on forever. One day a large majority of the population is going to wake up and stop buying the lies about being fat. Then we're going to have a revolution on our hands and I think it'd be poetic justice for it to start with a boycott of any airline that doesn't install seats big enough for the true "average" person... and a row or two for us bigger ones as well.
I get your points, sso (though I still think seating has more to do with safety than with fulfillment of a contract of carriage, but that's beside the point here)....I guess here's where the fact that I *just* *barely* fit into most airline seats comes into play for me. Sure, if money was no object, I could buy two seats every time I fly, and be totally comfortable hanging out in my two seats (setting aside the fact that I might have to defend my extra seat from overbooking)....but for me, money is an object and generally I can't afford to pay double the airfare as everybody else.
((Unless you're advocating that airlines allow fat people to reserve two seats while paying for one ticket? 'Cause I would be okay with that.))
Otherwise, what's effectively being done by policies like Southwest's, and by this practice of giving some sort of recompense to those whose "comfort" is compromised by sitting next to a fat person (which is funny to me, because I sure would like to get free airfare because of my discomfort when I don't have enough legroom and my knees are stuffed into the seatback under my tray table)....is charging rent for space used, and making airline travel only accessible for fat people higher up on the economic ladder.
Yes, that's what I'm saying, sorry if it wasn't clear. A single seat might not be comfortable for most people, but if someone bodily does not fit in one seat, then they should be allowed to have two seats (for the same price). It can't possibly be safe to have people squished so that someone is hanging into the aisle, or has an armrest digging into their side, whatever the case may be. I'm sure some people will whine about such a policy, but they're already whining, so might as well make everyone more comfortable.
It's been a long time since I've flown, so maybe someone can correct me on this.
Isn't there some sort of division between airline seats? Aren't the sides higher than the middle? I'm just wondering, because if one needed to use two seats, wouldn't that mean they'll have a lump in the middle of their butt? There've been times I've had to straddle two seats on a bus because of what I've been carrying, so I've had to put up with that kind of discomfort.
On flights I've been on in the past year, the seats are formed so they have an ever-so-slight dip in the middle with a 1-2" gap in between seats with the armrest up. Not comfortable, but better than being crammed in.
Oh, there *is* a gap - I wasn't sure if I was remembering that correctly. I haven't flown in... uhm... 8 years, I think. Maybe 9.
Maybe they could charge a few extra bucks if someone larger wanted to purchase two seat because they needed too. Plus size clothing.....we pay the extra money. The only thing that upsets me more is going into a restaurant and looking at the tiny little booths that I have to cram myself into. Yuck!!!