Friday, April 17, 2009

United We Are Assholes

Oh god, what to do... United was my favorite airline until now. I have racked up a bunch of frequent flyer miles with them, and just last weekend I got a free upgrade to first class on a United flight from Chicago, just because I put myself on standby for an early flight and they sold out all the economy seats but still had room in first! It was totally awesome.

But now United is going to start charging fat people for two tickets. Granted, I don't personally meet the criteria for being required to buy an extra seat according to this article, but now I feel like I ought to stop patronizing them. Even if I didn't feel some obligation to express solidarity with my fellow fatties, I'm also a little worried that I might get hassled at the gate. As Kate Harding points out in the post linked to above, how are they going to decide whether a person meets the criteria or not? Probably by authorizing the gate agents to visually size people up and decide whether someone looks too fat or not. Even if I never got forced to buy an extra ticket or miss my flight because of being fat, I would be absolutely outraged if I got pulled aside and grilled about whether I use a seatbelt extender (I don't, as it happens) or if I can lower the armrest (I can, and I always do if there's someone in the seat next to me, but it sure isn't comfortable), or worse -- if they made me sit in a seat in front of everyone at the gate and prove it. Even the thought that from now on the United gate agents will be looking me over and thinking about such things makes me feel angry and uncomfortable.

Of course Southwest had this same brilliant idea a while back, and it caused a little stir which has since (apparently) dissipated. There were some widely publicized cases of people being harrassed at the gate, Southwest got some bad PR, and then I imagine they asked the gate agents to back off a little bit even though they kept their discriminatory policy on the books. At least I haven't heard much about it since. I've flown on Southwest since then -- maybe that makes me a hypocrite, but they're so cheap and convenient that I just couldn't help myself. United, on the other hand, isn't particularly unique. I probably could avoid United without too much inconvenience or paying more for flights -- though I do have those frequent flyer miles, which are probably enough for a flight at this point... dilemma...

Well, anyway, I guess I'll have to think about it a little more. In the mean time, I'll daydream about a time when all this airline bullshit will be largely irrelevant (at least for domestic travel), thanks to this.

8 comments:

K said...

I'm not sure where to come down on this -- I think that it is cool to accommodate folks, but if they are charging by the seat for a limited number of seats, and we take up two seats, shouldn't we pay for it? (Like Mary, I fit into a seat.)

I guess there's no wheelchair surcharge, lap-child surcharge, or screaming child surcharge. It just seems slightly less obvious that there shouldn't be an extra seat surcharge.

Mary said...

But realistically, very few people literally take up two whole seats. It is vastly more common for some part of a person's body to just extend a little bit beyond the imaginary wall between passengers that would line up with the armrest. I don't see how you get from that to requiring a person to buy two tickets.

I also don't think it's fair to single out fat people, when there are other kinds of people whose body parts or other 'stuff' may extend across that imaginary wall for other reasons (e.g., someone with broad shoulders, or a child in their lap, or a cast on their arm). I guess I just don't think that when you buy an economy ticket on an airline, you should expect that you are entitled to a super-comfortable ride with full access to the space enclosed by some imaginary wall. One time I was on a flight back to the US from France, and I was seated in front of a baby in a car seat, so I couldn't put my seat back. Then the person in front of me put *his* seat back, so I was really quite cramped for the entire flight. But the flight was full, so there was nothing I could do about it. I just figured this is what you get when you fly economy since they make the dang seats so small. What I *didn't* do was call up the airline and insist that people should have to buy two tickets for a child in a car seat. I believe that a ticket buys passage for one *person*, not for the portion of one person that takes up some idealized amount of space as arbitrarily determined by an airline. And if the airline's seats are so small that certain people literally need two whole seats, then accommodating those people is the cost of doing business. More than just being 'cool', I would argue that doing so is their moral imperative and should be their legal imperative as well.

Betsy said...

The last couple of times my husband and I (both big people)have flown, I have bought an extra seat for between us, just for comfort, not because we couldn't fit in the seats. On our last flight, American wouldn't guarantee that our 3 seats would be in the same row, though it turned out that they were. They were prepared to make us buy 4 seats if we wanted to be sure to have an empty seat between us, even though the plane wasn't full.

I think there should be a surcharge for stinky people. Maybe they could have someone at the gate sniffing everyone. Of course they would have already had to have passed the size checker to be sure they wouldn't hang over the seat too much.

J said...

I gotta say, there's nothing worse than flying and having someone else's body taking up half your seat. I also think people should pay for a seat for their child. And I really like the idea of a stink surcharge!

Mary said...

J, I think you missed the point.

Also, just to clarify, in the situation I described with the child, the parents had bought a seat for him/her, but because of the car seat I couldn't put my seat back. Therefore the child was encroaching on my space. So by the logic of those who say that fat people should buy two tickets, the parents of that child should have had to buy two tickets for the child since he/she was taking up part of the space belonging to the person in the seat in front of him/her.

J said...

I didn't miss the point. I'm not saying it's right to charge double to some people; I'm just saying I want my whole seat. They're freakin' tiny enough anyway. I don't think it would kill the airline to give someone an extra seat if they need it... and would expect those who do need it to request it rather than suffer any embarrassment of having it pointed out to them.

I did miss the car seat deal. I would have been pissed! They SHOULD HAVE bought two seats!

J said...

Let me clarify -- I'm definitely against pointing it out to someone that they may be too large for the seat whether an extra seat is requested or not.

Kate Burton said...

I couldn't find an e-mail address so I'm putting this here. I thought you might be interested that the state of North Carolina is planning to use BMI as an indicator for health insurance coverage. Here's the info