fat people and planes

Murphy_The_Cat

malkie76 wrote: »

I don't know about much about American (although I'm flying transatlantic with them for the first time next week in business), but I do know a bit about BA (my airline of choice).

With BA a transatlantic upgrade is only 25k miles per person - so if you buy economy plus tickets with BA (often around £500pp) and upgrade them to BA business product for 25k miles per person. Further distances require more miles, and shorter distances arent worth the fuss.

Earning the miles can be done in many ways - for example BA allow you to convert Tesco clubcard points - I'm about to convert £100 of Tesco vouchers (this quarters total) which will give me 24k miles. If you do any online shopping then do it through their website and you can earn up to 12 miles per £, and they often double it during promotions.

The obvious way to earn miles is to fly, and you can set up a house-hold account meaning that all of your holiday miles can be pooled together.

Sadly, it looks like AA aren't at all generous on their upgrading - if I've read their site correctly, 8 x 500 mile upgrade sements would cost 35000 miles, so our upcoming trip to Dallas would cost an eye watering 83000 miles each :eek:, but that is for all 4 legs of the trip.
But I'm not complaining. Back in the peasant seats, if you plan your trip accordingly, it is possible to fly to the US 3 times and get the 4th trip free. Which is what 3 of us are doing on this flight. Sadly, my 2 year old daughter hasn't done the trip often enough to get her flight for nowt

Danstar_2

Mr_Lahey wrote: »

Turn left and have nothing to worry about

Flying business class back from Whistler (out of Vancouver) three years ago it wasn't too busy so they let me, my sister, dad and step mum sit anywhere in the cab because we and only a few other men were in the there so I sat in a window seat on my own 2. All was looking good but just before take off a woman was moved from cattle class to be sat in front of me and her chair was turned from 2-to-1 as she wouldn't fit in it otherwise and she sat down making the seat recline under her weight.

I, fearing for being crushed mid-flight, moved two rows back.

Now this woman had obviously bought the cheapest ticket for the flight but had been upgraded so having two business class seats all for herself turned into one lazy-boy sized chair.

My dad had, on the otherhand, paid for the 4 most expensive seats so we could have a nice relaxing flight home after two weeks of skiing.

Equitable, I think not.

dickydonkin

wallbash wrote: »

Another rich vein of contention.:rotfl:

Its the little kids/ old grannies etc who cant get the heavy suitcases off the moving belt, but are determined to get in the way of us , who can.
Or its the large family , all who must be there, why not just let the fittest , get them off.

Or the ones who want to put the trolley right next ( in everyone's way) to the belt:mad:

Reminds me of an incident last month as Samui airport in Thailand.

The luggage was just starting to come around the carousel when a guy who had obviously just spotted his luggage barged past us to retrieve his baggage.

It was a large backpack type of bag with numerous straps and one of the ends of a strap had become entangled in the mechanism of the carousel making it impossible to take off the belt.

The guy then decided to JUMP ON THE MOVING BELT in an effort to retrieve his bag.

Imagine a treadmill in a gym!

He was bent over hanging on to his trapped bag while his legs were going like the clappers!:rotfl:

Everyone was wetting themselves watching the 'event' - and there was a plane load of people watching I might add.

Fortunately, someone pressed the emergency stop button, and the now red faced passenger extracated his luggage and made a swift exit!

bunple

Murphy_The_Cat wrote: »

Me neither.

On a flight to Cuba a few years ago, a huuuugeeeeee bloke was shoehorned int a seat next to me, given 2 seat belt extenders and settled in for takeoff. I really, really wasn't looking forward to a longhaul flight next to him. But as soon as the seatbelt sign went out, two stewerdesses pried him from his seat (no kidding) and guided him through to Business Class.

A very close call for Mr Cat

what insentive is there for the fat guy to lose weight when he gets an upgrade, should have been you the guy sitting next to him that got the upgrade.

Charge Fat people for 2 seats.

Infidel

Several years ago I did suggest to an airline that they should ideally have a combined body & luggage weight allowance.

Extra incentive for those wanting to get in shape for a beach holiday too :rotfl: Win, win!

[Deleted User]

There was a documentary on BBC 4 about air travel in the 20s, when it was just starting out.

They used to charge by total weight taken on board - bags, passenger and all. The less you weighed the less you paid.

pinkneonmartini

As a 5ft10 larger lady, who can just fit in to the "cattle cabin" seats, i'd like to chuck in my 2p. I was diagnosed with a borderline underactive thyroid at 17. Normal range is 0.25-20.0 Mine is 0.22!!!!!! About as low as it can physically be without being prescribed medication. Which means i have to stick to a 1200 calorie a day diet, and exercise like a loon just to maintain my weight! I was put on a 400 calorie a day diet to loose the weight and my appendix ruptured in the middle of teaching a chemistry lesson! I have been told by 3 specialists that restricting my calorie intake will only cause further organ damage. It is only through exercise that i can hope to raise my metabolism, which will take years! I'm now 25 and in 8 years my thyroid levels have risen to 0.24!!!!

I personally hate flying with any random person sat next to me. I only recently divulged this secret hatred to my OH, and so on a recent flight we agreed to pay the extra cost, not only for extra legroom seats, but a single pair of seats on the midway exits. Thus ridding me of the hell i had the previous year where i spent 4 hours trying to do a crossword with a drunk elderly gentleman reading the entire puzzle book over my elbow! Plus my height means i too am in the bruised knee brigade upon landing!

This flight was 12 hours after i completed the BUPA manchester 10k, i was even wearing my "i finsihed the 2009 10k tshirt"! I work out 5 times a week, mainly running, and with vast amounts of weight training (I can comfortably lift 70kg). And yet when we boarded the plane, i was told that given the position of my seat, my size deemed me not to be "bodily able" and that i would have to move to a different seat for take off and landing, in case of an emergency!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So on a premium flight, which cost £350 for a normal seat we each paid an axtra £50 for the seats, and were still told to move! There were no empty seats so we were forced to swap seats with another couple for take off and landing, and in a 4 hour flight spent just over 2 hours in the seats we had paid for. The best part is, they were midgets! Actual genuine certifiable midgets (under 4ft each), and had booked the two seats infront of the exit which were deemed "restricted legroom & height"!

So despite being "too large" for the seats during take off and landing, and paying extra for them, I was then squished into a smaller than standard seat, which was uncomfortable but i still fit in to it!

Paying extra doesn't make a blind bit of difference! I could have benchpressed the tiny stewardess who refused to let me sit in the seat I had paid for! There was no formal enquiry made into my size, I was never asked, simply told!

There are people like me who will struggle with their weight for their entire lives. It is not a matter of eating less, some things are chemical, and for all the poor souls like me who are "borderline" there is sod all we can do about it!

You "skinnys" can scream about being squashed all you want, but bear in mind some of us "fattys" ALREADY pay extra and it makes no difference at all!!!!!!!

And as for the luggage allowance, who cares!!!!! If you want to take 20kgs of feathers on a plane it'll take up more space than 20kgs of lead! The contents of someones suitcase is irrelavent! You pay for luggage or you dont. Before you look the "fatty" at check-in up and down and wonder how much their bag weighs, try looking at the familys with prams/pushchairs/extra hand luggage who scream like banshees when they're told they'll have to pay extra! To this day my blood still boils remembering a man who had a 15 minute argument at check-in, because he was refusing to pay for an additional case, because his daughter had her own Dora the Explorer suitcase, which wouldn't fit in the hand luggage bin! Turned out the only thing inside it was a Dora the Explorer doll that was bigger than the actual child! The case was thrown away and the child made to carry the doll through the airport. It later appeared on the plane, where it drove a fellow passenger to move seats just to get away from it, and so it was granted the empty seat for the remainder of the flight. Surely a doll that is bigger than the child it is flying with should have to pay for it's seat too?

jonesjw

DELETED USER wrote:

There was a documentary on BBC 4 about air travel in the 20s, when it was just starting out.

They used to charge by total weight taken on board - bags, passenger and all. The less you weighed the less you paid.

This is precisely how it should be today.

ferf1223

jonesjw wrote: »

This is precisely how it should be today.

And then everyone would be OK with it if a fat person opted not to check any luggage to off-set their weight and got the seat next to you, then?

I still love that the focus is on 'fat people' and not 'big people'...I suppose because the idea is that fat people are fat through fault of their own and big people can't help it. And yet, the big people still encroach on the space of the passesnger next to them...but it's OK, because it's not their "fault".

Tojo_Ralph

.....
"Hollywood director Kevin Smith told to get off a Southwest Airlines plane because he was too fat"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjESoE0STMw&feature=player_embedded

http://blogs.dailyrecord.co.uk/joanburnie/2010/02/youre-in-no-shape-to-fly-kevin-1.html