Weigh more, pay more: Argument for charging obese people higher flying fares • Hacker News Board

Re: Weigh more, pay more: Argument for charging obese people higher flying fares

#61

Post by kahawe » Mon, Mar 19, 2012, 1:58 PM UTC

masklinn wrote: post #10

VolatileVoid wrote: post #5

The reason, generally, you are charged more for heavier luggage has got nothing to do with jet fuel consumption and everything to do with higher baggage handling fees. Since handlers don't actually have to carry obese people (that's a job for the person's legs), it makes complete sense to charge for heavier luggage rather than heavier people.

Baggage handlers are not paid by baggage weight, so that does not make much sense. Jet fuel consumption, on the other hand, is heavily impacted by airframe weight.

Baggage storage is very limited and usually packed full way more than passenger cabin space.

Re: Weigh more, pay more: Argument for charging obese people higher flying fares

#62

Post by heretohelp » Mon, Mar 19, 2012, 2:25 PM UTC

kahawe wrote: post #59

heretohelp wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obesity is 100% calories in/calories out. Good thing I'm at a startup trying to help people eat healthy and in reasonable portions without feeling unduly hungry.

> Obesity is 100% calories in/calories out Generally, yes, you are technically correct. What I hate about where this train of thought often leads is: it is not human, at all. It ultimately makes all fat people look like lazy, greedy and stupid slobs because hey, the answer is sooo simple and totally obvious, right? 100% calories in vs. out! What you completely fail to realize is the squishy human part that makes a lo…

Humans are maladapted for western diets and western surplus, it's not my goal to assign blame but rather to help people get around the natural limitations of day to day life.

It's unreasonable to expect every human being to possess the knowledge of a nutritionist just to manage their own diets.

Hopefully the product I'm working on will level the playing field.

Re: Weigh more, pay more: Argument for charging obese people higher flying fares

#63

Post by zeeed » Mon, Mar 19, 2012, 3:35 PM UTC

vacri wrote: post #20

slimdizzy wrote: post #3

The author dilutes and weakens his argument by bringing up obesity. Whether a 80kg person is 40% fat or 10% fat doesn't matter; the central point is that a person who weighs more, consumes more, and thus ought to pay more. I wish he stuck more to that point instead of running off on the tangent about health and the environment. Friends with whom I discuss this proposal often say that many obese people cannot help bei…

Weight of a 747-8: 442 metric tons. Weight of its 467 passengers ex luggage, assuming 80kg average: 37.3 metric tons. That 442 tons has to move as a whole regardless of how lean your diet is. So when you're paying for your flight ticket, extremely little of it is about moving the meat in your body. After all the overheads (salaries, fees, whatnot), whatever's left of the ticket that's paying for jet fuel has less tha…

> less than 10% of it spent on shifting your meat.

where does that figure come from?

> Extra luggage is more work for the airline

Extra pieces: maybe. Excess weight: nope.

I've been charged up to E100 for 3kg of luggage overweight (23kg allowed, my suitcase had 26kg). That didn't make sense to me when I looked at the guy behind me in the queue, who easily had 40kg more than me on his hips.

It's the pricing structure that is completely out of proportion and that needs to be brought back to something reasonable.

Re: Weigh more, pay more: Argument for charging obese people higher flying fares

#64

Post by zeeed » Mon, Mar 19, 2012, 4:04 PM UTC

antihero wrote: post #55

masklinn wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think 75KG is a good standard weight. I'm sure that can be discussed, focusing on this detracts from the article's main point. > I mean, what about people who are muscular? They're completely irrelevant, this is not about people being healthy versus not healthy, this is about weight being a direct driver of costs for airlines. > So should people who are muscular be exempt? No, why should they be> > Do we do…

Because all of these factors have some degree to which isn't under our control - by this logic a muscular woman pays less than a muscular guy, which is sexist. Would you have disabled people pay a huge amount for their wheelchair? How is discriminating based on sex or height or build any different? Some people naturally gain muscles at a much faster rate than others. What makes it okay to discriminate against those p…

You're taking a slippery slope from "out of control to some degree" to "a society where people are discriminated based on things they cannot control (at all)". In the vast majority of cases, obesity can be controlled by a healthy lifestyle.

Right now, it's unfair to the skinnier among us, where the prices for overweight luggage and overweight pax do not compare at all. People search all kinds of justification why being obese is ok and needs to receive special attention. I do not argue with that.

But: please explain to me why I should pay E100 for 3kg overweight, while the obese person on the seat next to me pays nothing for a 40kg weight difference. How is that fair?

Regarding what you call "discrimination":

It's really really easy to exempt the obvious (wheelchair etc.) from the bill. No one is asking to become inhumane or discriminate. Where did you get that idea from? This is not about private profit but about the conceived asymmetry in the pricing structure.

Re: Weigh more, pay more: Argument for charging obese people higher flying fares

#65

Post by kristiandupont » Mon, Mar 19, 2012, 4:51 PM UTC

antihero wrote: post #56

rahulrg wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trying to understand how to factor in "fairness" here. The fact is that irrespective of body content (ie fat or muscle), what counts for the economics of the airline is the total weight. Heavier the passengers and the luggage, more fuel is burnt, and the costs correspondingly go up. I agree with you, however, that the 75 kg choice is pretty arbitrary. I wonder, though, if tickets online can be initially issued at pri…

But then, many people are on medication that causes huge weight gain, or are naturally built bigger, or are taller, or are male. We shouldn't support discrimination in order to detect profit, and something like "how much someone weighs" is far too simplistic to take into account the factors that would contribute to it being a horrendously unfair system.

If everybody had their own little plane to fly, the overweight person would end up paying more for the same trip because of the higher fuel cost. That person is simply more expensive to transport.

Now, you can claim that we shouldn't expose people to the humiliation of being weighed at the airport and I agree with that and thus, it might just be best to divide the added cost among the passengers like we do today.

But apart from that, the fairness argument seems deeply flawed to me. I guess that I am quite the capitalist (even though I'm from Scandinavia) but it doesn't seem fair to me to force the other passengers to share that persons extra cost.

Re: Weigh more, pay more: Argument for charging obese people higher flying fares

#66

Post by vacri » Mon, Mar 19, 2012, 10:00 PM UTC

zeeed wrote: post #63

vacri wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weight of a 747-8: 442 metric tons. Weight of its 467 passengers ex luggage, assuming 80kg average: 37.3 metric tons. That 442 tons has to move as a whole regardless of how lean your diet is. So when you're paying for your flight ticket, extremely little of it is about moving the meat in your body. After all the overheads (salaries, fees, whatnot), whatever's left of the ticket that's paying for jet fuel has less tha…

> less than 10% of it spent on shifting your meat. where does that figure come from? > Extra luggage is more work for the airline Extra pieces: maybe. Excess weight: nope. I've been charged up to E100 for 3kg of luggage overweight (23kg allowed, my suitcase had 26kg). That didn't make sense to me when I looked at the guy behind me in the queue, who easily had 40kg more than me on his hips. It's the pricing structure…

where does that figure come from?

Really? It's the first two lines of my comment, specifically spaced out to make it clearer.

As for the other issue, excess weight is easy to convince the public about, especially now that they're doing more of the 'please standardise your luggage' where individual pieces also get weight limits (as you found).

Re: Weigh more, pay more: Argument for charging obese people higher flying fares

#67

Post by vacri » Mon, Mar 19, 2012, 10:05 PM UTC

fab13n wrote: post #54

vacri wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not the pricing scheme, it's the invasion of privacy that people will arc up about. Someone who is sensitive about their weight - and there are a lot of them - will be very difficult to manage in this situation.

You mean, the privacy of those people who will be scanned and groped by TSA thugs minutes after they've checked their luggage in? It seems that people are ready to give up the last bit of dignity as soon as they enter an airport; if a company could offer a substantial discount in exchange for paying by the kg, many people would cope with it. Not everyone, but enough people to sustain an airline company. The reason wh…

The article is from Melbourne, Australia. We don't have scanners or pat-downs.

But anyway, I used to work in a call centre doing anonymous cold-calling social surveys for government. One survey had a section on sexual abuse and rape - and a few of us found it odd that some respondants would open up their private lives answering these questions, sometimes in a fair amount of detail, but still balk at the standard demographic section at the end where they are asked their income bracket. Some magic numbers are more significant than others.