It has been a while since I received any comments here. Clearly I am not being controversial enough, either that or my reader is agreeing with me.
I was reading the other day about a woman who was injured on a plane. She was suing the airline because she was crushed by the passenger sitting next to her.
Whenever I have flown, I have waited with a great deal of trepidation in the departure lounge, examining the assembly of fellow passengers and assessing the ones that I really did not want to sit next to. There are many stereotypes that are always present. The ones with the loud voices, loud shirts or worse, loud children, then there are the ones who look like they might be terrorists, the very tall, like me, whose legs will spread through necessity into the surrounding spaces. There are the elderly who one guesses will be up and down visiting the toilet throughout the flight, there are those that look as if they are about to die of fright, and those that just look ill. By far the worst nightmare though has to be the enormously obese person who cannot possibly fit into a normal seat without overflowing into all the surrounding spaces.
When such a person arrives in the departure lounge, you can see the feeling of panic spread through the passengers each trying to glimpse the seat number on the boarding pass, checking it against their own. The nightmare has to come true for someone, and everyone hopes that it isn't them. More people pray at this time than they do at take off and landing. If I had any proclivity for prayer, this would be the time for me to do it.
I, like many others, loathe invasions of my personal space. I am not naturally gregarious and treat most people distantly and hope that they will remain that way. When i enter a room, i will choose a seat as far away from anyone as possible, and hate being touched in any way by strange people. To be overwhelmed by folds of adipose tissue is my idea of hell.
According to the story, the husband of the large woman, had requested that he sat somewhere else, and so a poor unsuspecting woman was saddled with the experience. Fat lady was so vast that the arm rest between the seats had to be removed and so the poor soul next to her was crushed and needed hospital treatment.
A doctor friend of mine tells me that there really is no excuse for obesity. Even though there are many contributing factors, a fat person fundamentally eats too much. For whatever reason, they eat more than they need to and that is a personal choice.
Everyone who flies is limited in the weight of baggage that they can carry, regardless of their own mass. So a 120lb passenger has the same limitations as one of 600lb. THis is a ludicrous situation and maybe it should be redressed. Perhaps there should be a restriction on total weight carried and that penalty tarriffs for those whose combine mass exceeds a reasonable norm. I am tall and probably carry more pounds than I should and would accept this system, even though we tall people are discriminated against by the ridiculous seat pitch of most airliners.
Discrimination is part of life and maybe by discriminating in favour of the non obese, that might provide some incentive for some people to make life style changes, even if it is just choosing not to fly!
4 comments:
I like the idea of redressing the fair fare weight issue. As an adult of slight build I am most likely to be lighter than many of the adults and larger size child passengers. If flights were to be priced on personal weight then it might make people and parents think twice before feeding themselves and their young up on junk foods and I should be entitled to a lower rate or be allowed more baggage.
Women would always want more baggage than allowed, however much they had - You can never have too many shoes lol
An interesting subject.
Some airlines are actually trying to introduce a policy whereby they charge any morbidly obese (descriptive expression) for two seats for everyone's comfort and convenience. This has had mixed reactions from people,many who say it is discrimination:-
"Ticket agents will not follow a height-weight chart to determine who can fit comfortably into the 18.75-inch-wide plane seats. Instead, Vargo said, they will make "a judgment call" about whether to require an obese person to buy a second seat, whether or not the flight is full. The passenger can get a refund later for the second seat if the flight is not sold out."
This seems completely fair to me and would also mean the larger person should be able to carry a larger amount of luggage unless they have the refund, of course.
It is a tricky subject, but surely with this terrible obesity epidemic that appears to be rapidly spreading through the Western world, it would make sense to build a few 'extra large' seats into every aircraft to be sold, obviously, at a premium price. The seats at the very front are usually suitable for taller people. :-)
I myself once sat on an aircraft next to such a person and I am quite small. The central arm between us had to be raised and I was squashed against the window, desperately trying to 'think myself outside' perched on the wing of the plane. Luckily it was a short flight but I could feel claustrophobia engulfing me several times. To pass me my airline 'snack' (another whole blog for you there lol) the poor hostess had to lean over the seat in front! And yes, my neighbour had his own picnic with him. Since then, when travelling alone, I have always chosen an aisle seat, although I love looking out of the window.
There are many areas where larger people compromise the safety and comfort of both themselves and others, not to mention the risk to their own health. Many hospitals will refuse to operate on such large people which is solid proof that obesity is not a normal state of affairs.
LOL I'll stop there... :-)
Discrimination is inevitable as it is a part of human behaviour. This becomes more clear when ones own safety or space is compromised, whether by a stereotype or not. Ok we are all human, but we are not all equal, that can never be the case.
I guess that modern society expects too much from its citizens if it imagines that discrimination is dead and buried. We are all subject to it, and have to learn to live with that.
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