Airline Seats Revisited

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Last week I blogged about the recent Supreme Court ruling mandating that airlines accommodate oversized passengers.

This ruling was picked up by international media, especially in the US, where in light of their own obesity epidemic, this ruling attracted substantial attention.

In fact, I was interviewed by MSNBC for my take on this, especially with regard to the question how airlines should determine who would qualify for an extra seat and who would not.

My simple solution, as reported by MSNBC was as follows:

“You can’t bring it down to a BMI. People’s body shapes are different.” Instead, the chair of obesity research at the University of Alberta suggests a solution inspired by the baggage sizers already in place at many airports. Instead, Sharma would like airlines to place an airplane seat in the terminal — “somewhere that offers travelers a bit of privacy.” Then, if it’s not obvious that a traveler won’t fit in one seat, they can sit in the sample seat. “If they don’t fit in the seat, then they’re too big and they’ll need to have that extra seat. At no cost. It’s not rocket science.”

Obviously, other “experts” had other suggestions including bringing in doctors’ notes or simply increasing the seat sizes for everybody. For a full report on this story click here.

If readers of this blog have any other suggestions – I’d love to hear them.

AMS
Edmonton, Alberta