How many times are we going to go through this with the airlines? It has already happened with Southwest now United. In a time that people barely have money to travel United wants to charge more for a seat on their planes. No matter how the size nazi’s slice this one it is just another y for the airlines to profit from the discrimination of a specific section of the public.
United Airlines is implementing a new policy that affects passengers who are too large for seats, as well as those sitting next to them. The new policy states that a passenger will be left behind or required to purchase an extra ticket or seat upgrade if he/she is unable to fit into a single seat in the ticketed cabin, unable to properly buckle the seatbelt using a single seatbelt extender, or unable to put the seat’s armrests down when seated. The policy applies to tickets purchased on or after March 4, for travel on or after April 15.
On its website, United asked that passenger “please understand that we care a great deal about all of our customers’ well-being, and we have implemented this policy to help ensure that everyone’s travel experiences with United are comfortable and pleasant.”
Visit www.united.com.
After years of writing on stories like this it almost makes me wonder if it is doing any good, becasue for every article like this that is written there will be dozens of people that will say stupid things about fat people without regard to the situation. If I can help it I will drive before I fly, but if I have to fly I would prefer not to gamble with whether or not I will have to pay for one or two seats. Defeats the purpose of scouring the Internet for low fares if a person will be arbitrarily charged more based on their size.
I ran into this yesterday while flying across the country. The attendant at the boarding desk paged me because I was preboarding due to recovering from ankle injury. When she saw me, she informed me that if I couldn’t fit into my seat, I would have to buy another one. When asked, she admitted that she was humiliating me in public based solely on my appearance, having no idea whether I could fit into my seat or not (I can, though it’s painful.) She then said that it wasn’t a full flight so it wouldn’t be an issue (knowing this, it was even more appalling that she would subject a passenger to embarrassment based on nothing but a subjective visual judgement) but that in future I might be “left behind.”
Surely there is a way to hold the airlines accountable for discrimination and abuse of passengers?