Monday 15 April 2013

Too fat to fly?




There’s nothing like a budget airline seat to make you feel that you’re bigger than you thought as you yank the safety belt around you. We’re all pretty small in our family, and yet, flying back from Faro last week, I noticed how snuggly we all fitted in to our Easyjet seats. I wondered how a huge passenger, three times the width of my size 6 daughters, had fared. Did he have to buy two or three seats? Or did he just bulge over onto his neighbours?
I love obesity researcher Zoe Harcombe’s take on just this issue in her newsletter today. Zoe, who is 5' 2" and weighs 50kg, got her husband to measure her at her widest point, with her arms by her side - and found she was 18", the width of a typical airseat. Now Airbus has a plan to make the aisle seat 20" wide, and the middle and window seats 17" each... But, as Zoe points out, only a minority of people who are smaller and slimmer than her (let's face it, children mostly) will fit into these narrower seats....
Zoe also mentions that a Samoan airline is now planning to weigh passengers and their luggage for a total weight per passenger. If this takes off with other airlines it could be fab news for those of us who are small enough to struggle to keep our luggage under 20kg. 

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