by Mary M. Redoutey

Created on: May 02, 2009   Last Updated: May 03, 2009

When United Airlines announced that it was going to charge obese people double the fare for travel, many people were outraged and with good reason. Airlines should not charge their overweight or obese passengers more to fly.

Charging overweight and/or obese people more money to fly is counter-productive.

It has been estimated that 40% of the world's adult population is obese. That means that 40% of the adult population has a BMI, Body Mass Index, of more than 30 and plenty more people are overweight bordering on obesity. The World Health Organization predicts that "by 2015, 2.3 billion adults will be overweight (many bordering on obese) and more than 700 million will be obese."

After reading these statistics and others it is clear that the airlines are going to be having to deal with an ever increasing stream of overweight and obese customers for a long, long time. And if they want to have these customers frequent them instead of going to other airlines or, even worse, deciding to use alternative forms of transportation entirely, then they had better do their best to meet the needs of these passengers rather than embarrassing them and/or penalizing them by charging them more money to fly.

It might seem on the surface that the airlines can afford to mistreat their obese and/or overweight passengers with impunity. Yet, if their larger customers go elsewhere, they will drag along their children, their spouses, their friends and other travelling companions with them so in the end the airlines will be losing a lot more money than they would if they had decided to refrain from charging their overweight passengers more money.

It is clear that charging overweight and/or obese passenger more to fly is a bad business practice as it runs the risk of causing the airlines to lose money and, even more important, brand loyalty.

So what should the airlines do?

Disneyland in Anaheim, California, shut down one ride for a time (reopened it March 2009), and made its seats bigger to fit the needs of its customers. It did not charge more for those who were overweight to get on that ride as that would have made "The Happiest Place on Earth" a very unhappy place for its many overweight visitors. It would have made enemies and would have lost business that it could ill afford losing.

Increasing the width of some of the seats in coach would be a good idea. The experts might say that the width of the seats and the leg room have not shrunk but most passengers, even those who are thin, would appreciate

• 1
• 2
• 3
• Next Page >>