| The recent announcement by American Airlines that they plan to charge passengers for all checked bags is a recipe for disaster and ignores the elephant in the room. Their new policy will encourage more passengers to cram as much as they can into carry on luggage so that overhead lockers on planes will be bulging with bags. Expect to see every child in a family boarding flights dragging large carry on bags behind them and passengers asking others with no carry on bags to walk through the gate with theirs.
The elephant in the room which no body in the airline industry wants to talk about is the 300 pound or more small elephant size passengers that are carried on flights for the same price as persons less than half their weight. We all know that it costs more to fly a heavier person than a lighter person because that is confirmed by the law of physics. When air travel was first introduced in the 1930's it was common for every passenger to be weighed and it still is the case for travel on very small commercial aircraft plying islands and so on. Nowadays airlines have an estimated weight for all passengers on commercial flights and no longer weigh passengers however the fuel cost crisis should have airline managers looking at the problem from all angles and ignoring the elephant in the room is plainly stupid.
Here is how a new Fair Fares For All program might work. Equip aircraft with bench seats in coach class. Some smaller regional planes already have these on the rear row. For example on the Boeing 737 workhorse if bench seats were installed each side of the isle with four sliding and folding arm rest assemblies then each bench seat could accommodate two, three or four passengers depending on their weight. Airlines could for example sell seats by weight class with say Class 1 up to 100 lbs, Class 2 up to 150 lbs, Class 3 up to 200 Lbs and Class 4 for 250 lbs and above. At check in passengers step on a scale and are weighed. If passengers gave an underweight when they purchased the ticket then they are charged the balance at check in after being weighed.
But isn't this discrimination the naysayers will cry, why should I have to pay more because I am heavier than the other guy. The answer is in the law of physics, the cost of transporting passengers by air is dependent on weight so why should lighter weight passengers have to subsidize the cost of carrying heavier flyers? This is not discrimination its admitting there is an elephant in the room.
So what about charging for luggage? The answer is simple. Weigh and charge for all luggage, checked and hand carry. That's the fairest and most sensible way to handle it.
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