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NEWS > BUSINESS > OBESE PASSENGERS A GROWING PROBLEM FOR LIGHTWEIGHT AIRLINES
OBESE PASSENGERS A GROWING PROBLEM FOR LIGHTWEIGHT AIRLINES
July 4 2009
Washington, D.C. – The next time you book a flight you might want to reconsider chowing down on that jelly doughnut. More and more often the obesity epidemic facing the United States is taking to the skies as airlines struggle to deal with the ever increasing size of passengers. With airlines continuing to struggle through the 
recession they many are now burdened with facing up to the economic realities and either cutting back or charging extra in order to stay in the air. With the economic crisis doing little for the beltlines of Americans, many fear that the tightening may get even worse and force the airlines to make even more tough decisions.
At issue is a combination of toxic factors that have contributed to the ever declining revenues for airlines: an inability to contract seat sizes, an increase in weight eating up more fuel, and the voracious appetites on in flight meals have combined to steadily erode the profit margins. With low quality foods becoming more and more common as people cut back food budgets, waistlines across the country are steadily increasing, forcing struggling air carriers into a corner that many fear could cripple the industry forever.
“I don’t think people could imagine a world without air travel but that is unfortunately getting closer and closer to a reality. Obese people are complaining about having to pay extra but they are more of a burden on the airplane and our bottom line. Aside from it just being plaint unfair for an average sized person to be paying the same as someone two or three times their size, the economic realities just don’t allow for it anymore,” said an airline insider who preferred to remain anonymous. “We aren’t looking to punish people we just need to pay our bills. Fuel costs money, food costs money and we aren’t making it back on people that are significantly overweight. These people are hurting our ability to even function as a business anymore.”
Airlines have traditionally tried to cram more seating into planes in order to increase capacity. They have also routinely recycled leftover food into new meals, something which is becoming ever more difficult as overweight passengers routinely eat their entire meal.
“Go into any airport in America and you will see line-ups of overweight people bouncing into each other like bumper cars trying to get on a plane. Portly, rotund, obese, and just plain fat it never seems to matter how big they are they still try to squeeze onto a plane knowing the personal difficulty they are going to endure and the 
hardship they are going to cause other passengers and the airline. In a lot of ways it really boils down to good manners,” said Scrape TV Airline analyst Jeffry Johnson. “It’s particularly bad for destinations to exotic places because these people will likely come back heavier than when they left which causes even more trouble. Unfortunately outside charging them more for the trip they can’t do a whole lot. They can’t restrict them from entering the plane and they can’t make them walk so airlines are kind of stuck.”
Some airlines have considered employing cargo planes to and from high traffic destinations such as Los Angeles and New York to help ease the load on normal sized passenger planes and reduce overall costs.
“It’s unlikely that many people will go on diets before taking a flight somewhere or that even if they do that it will make enough of an impact to affect the bottom lines of the airlines. If they could somehow fuse gastric bypass surgery or liposuction with the airline industry then you may have something. People could have pounds taken off while waiting for their flight,” continued Johnson. “If something drastic doesn’t happen it could very well mean the end of the American airline industry. As people just get fatter and fatter the burden on the airlines is going to increase and that could spell doom in the very near future.”
Many airlines have already switched to low fat foods on flights and forcing fruits and vegetables in meals which is beginning to have an impact on the leftovers issue.
William Ashford, Business Correspondent
NEWS > BUSINESS > OBESE PASSENGERS A GROWING PROBLEM FOR LIGHTWEIGHT AIRLINES
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