A former colleague of mine posted a screenshot of an article today (see above). The article was headlined “37st man forced to pay for two seats on jet finds they are rows apart”. There was no link to the article itself for context but it wasn’t difficult to find that the original article was this one but that is behind a paywall so there’s also another copy-paste gutter press article on the same story here.
The headlines on articles like this are deliberately designed to be provocative and induce a particular response. That’s the way newspapers work. Headlines like “everything was fine today” aren’t going to draw readers interest to buy the paper or click on the story so unfortunately, we get the press we deserve.
Should obese people pay for two seats?
First I want to explain that when you’re using any sort of public service that you need to be aware of the needs of other people, it’s not just about you. Whenever I fly, I am either flying business class, first class or with my wife or I buy two seats because it’s not fair to a passenger sat next to me if I do not fit in the seat properly and take up some of their upper body room.
I have seen articles of single passengers that have complained about being forced to sit sandwiched between two obese strangers, and I don’t think that’s fair but I do think the airlines need to take some responsibility here too.
From a luxury for the few to the herding of the many
Back in the halcyon period of air travel, only the super rich could afford to fly. Flying was a luxury. The seats were like armchairs, smoking was allowed. From the minute you boarded, you could indulge in the finest wines and food. It’s not like that today.
Todays flights are actually slower than flights from the 1960s, the seats are much smaller and gone are all the freebies and luxuries from years yonder. On the flip side of that coin, transporting people like cattle and charging for any service that you used to get for free has meant that it has expanded the franchise of travel to people that previously would have been heading to the nearest seaside resort, not sunnier climates.
Smaller seats, bigger passengers equals conflict
The seats are getting smaller (no, it’s not your imagination, they actually are), the passengers are getting bigger and it’s inevitable that this creates conflict. The airlines need a better way to deal with things so some of their customers aren’t squashed in like pasta and so that those that need more space can be catered for fairly, and without humiliation.
My experience with trying to book two seats for one person
Let me share with you my own experience of booking flights In 2018, I wanted to book a holiday of a lifetime for myself and my wife as her 40th Birthday present.
Back in December 2002, I went to New York with my best friend and I had always dreamed of going back to experience the magic of New York with my wife.
We had set up a savings pot to save up to go there. That plan changed when we bought a house together instead. So the opportunity hadn’t presented itself until 2018.
For those of you that don’t know me, I’m a bit of an aviation enthusiast. I’ve been fascinated by planes since my aunty took me on my flight to Belfast when I was just 10 years old. The ultimate dream was to fly on the world’s only full double decker passenger plane, the A380 super jumbo, on the upper deck.
So, I did what I do best, an awful lot of detailed research and found out that we could fly a Singapore Airlines A380 from Frankfurt to New York, and we could do it in Business class. Business class isn’t cheap, but I found out that there are a few heavily discounted “saver” tickets on each flight if I booked a full year in advanced, so that’s what I did.
I actually managed to upgrade the return leg to first class, imagine having a double bed on a plane and having more crew than passengers in your cabin, it was quite an experience for someone normally sated with a Travelodge and Greggs.
Flying Business/First class in a 1-2-1 layout cabin meant I didn’t need to book myself an extra seat but when you’re flying short haul, it’s a different story. So, we had the tickets from Frankfurt to New York but we needed to book flights to and from Frankfurt.
Two seats, one passenger fun
I tried to book online via the Lufthansa website and I looked everywhere for information on how to book what they call “a comfort seat” but there was no information anywhere. Not even in the obscure aviation forums or TripAdvisor.
So, I decided to ring them for advice instead. The first time I rang, they didn’t understand and thought I was just looking to book two seats for my wife and I. The price they quoted was three times higher than the online price. I was hardly going to accept those prices.
After several attempts trying to explain the situation, they just hung up on me. I tried again, this time calling the online help department rather than sales. They didn’t know either, they just told me to “ask at the airport”!
In the end, bereft of any other options and with no other airline that flew to Frankfurt to make the connections work, I just took a gamble and booked three tickets, two using my same name and passport number for two of them. Not only was I paying for the seats, but an additional charge to guarantee that the three seats were together, adding an extra £100 each way to an already obscenely expensive trip. It’s annoying but if you want to guarantee good seats then, that’s just par for the course these days.
Experience at the airport
We got to the airport nice and early for our flight. We had checked in online and had our boarding passes but I still went up to the desk to check that everything would be ok. It turned out it wasn’t that simple and that it would affect the plane’s manifest. The lady at the airport was lovely, she told me that I should have just been told to put the surname “AdditionalSeat” in for the third ticket, not that there was anyway I could have known this. She had to cancel and reissue our tickets and reassign the seats. It took a while, but at least it was sorted and we were on our way.
On the way back, it was even more awkward. The staff at Frankfurt didn’t know what to do. The queues were very long and they had to call central office twice. At one point it looked like we were going to have to buy new tickets, it was an incredibly frustrating situation, especially as I had tried my best to do everything right, it just seems the system wasn’t designed to cater for that situation and nobody really seemed to know what to do.
Flying your patience
Flying is a nightmare when you’re my size. I know that some airlines won’t let you fly business class if you need a seatbelt extender because they use special seatbelts with pointless built in airbags.
Some airlines have seats with armrests that can’t be moved so even if you pay for two seats, it can be uncomfortable. When I buy tickets, I have to find our the variation of aircraft they use for the route, then I look up the seating layouts, the leg space, pitch and width of the seats. I go find photos of the seating (that’s actually the hard part) so that I can be relatively confident that I will be comfortable and my fellow passengers will be too. I carry my own seatbelt adapter so I don’t have to deal with the embarrassment of asking for one, although cabin crew are usually incredibly polite and discrete about it.
You also have to be really careful not to book an emergency exit row seats because to sit in those seats, you need to be able to open the doors very quickly in the event of a crash and quite rightly, some airlines feel that if you need a seatbelt adapter, you’re probably not mobile enough to handle that situation.
A privilege, not a right
I appreciate flying is a privilege, not a right and the purpose of this article isn’t a woe is me, compo face sob story, I just think it would be nice if the airlines could get together and come up with some sort of consistent policy and make it easier to accommodate larger passengers in a way that is fair to other passengers too. Hell, just having an extra seat checkbox and info popup to say when they expect customers to use it would avoid a lot of embarrassment and annoyance at the airport.
It should be as simple as if you need to use a seatbelt extender, then you need to buy an extra seat, and they should make it easy to buy that extra seat.
There is a lot of animosity towards obese passengers and I can understand that if you’ve been forced to sit next to someone my size. It would be nice if the kind of people that make comments suggesting obese people should just stay at home and never fly actually thought about what they’re saying before opening their mouths.
Some people genuinely believe that having obese passengers on a jetliner will make it crash or burn more fuel. You might want to consider the tonnes of fuel in the wings of a jet, or the cargo beneath your feet. Unless you’re in a small private jet or a helicopter, the size of a passenger is no threat whatsoever and although overall weight does affect fuel burn, passenger weight makes little difference.
Yes, I know airlines like to charge you by the kilogram for hold luggage, but this is more to do with maximising the unexpected charges so they can advertise a £29.99 flight to you that will really cost a lot more. It’s not about safety.
Opinions and arseholes
Don’t get me wrong, everyone is entitled to an opinion and I also think people shouldn’t be constantly looking to get offended or protected from hearing opinions they don’t like, life is like that. It doesn’t matter who you are, there are always going to be people that dislike you, whether it’s the woman with long hair covering the screen of the passenger behind her’s seat, the person that reclines their seat the whole flight (probably because they’re tall and economy seats give very little leg room), or the family that brings their screaming toddler on a plane. Should alcoholics be banned, because some of them will cause a problem for others on a flight?
I don’t think we should tell people that they shouldn’t fly just because it’s inconvenient for us. I think we should all think about other passengers and remember they are human too. Perhaps we aught to go back to the days where flying was a little bit more of a treat than an entitlement so the airlines stop trying to cram in as many human beings as possible and perhaps make the journeys a bit more pleasant.
I love aviation and I love travelling. I don’t think that having a weight problem should preclude anyone from enjoying what the world has to offer. Yes, it makes certain things more difficult. So does smoking, so does drinking, so does over-exercising, nobody is perfect.
Rant Over 