14 ms·

An American airline wins the right to weigh passengers on its Samoan route

164 points by nether 10y ago

bobbles 10y ago
"Tall people earn substantially more money on average, and so it seems only fair (from this short writer’s perspective) that they experience a bit of added discomfort or have to shell out extra for a roomier seat. But the overweight and obese? They receive no such life benefits, and it feels rather cruel, if not illegal, to ask them to pay extra for the same service." Jesus...
- boardwaalk 10y ago
  I was just about to comment on that. Quite bizarre commentary for a Economist article.
- csydas 10y ago
  Please expand on what you find disagreeable here, else the post is just white noise and not really appropriate for HN. I do think the author's reasoning in that part is flawed and a bit vengeful simply because it seems to me like a misguided sense of justice and right/wrong, and that they want what they perceive as justice simply because of the circumstances of one's birth sometimes being a boon, sometimes being a burden. But this is also a post from a blog, not an article from The Economist - I think the opinion is shallow and poorly thought out, but it's just an opinion.
  - demosthenes111 10y ago
    It's a completely ridiculous comment. This policy isn't about "fairness" but rather weight distribution and cost of fuel. Punishing tall people for being born tall and making more "on average" is absurd.
  - jayjay71 10y ago
    "Please expand on what you find disagreeable here, else the post is just white noise and not really appropriate for HN." That comment piqued my curiosity enough for me to read the article, something which probably isn't true for over 99% of the comments I read on HN. So I strongly disagree with you that it isn't appropriate for HN. There is nothing defamatory in what he says, and whether or not it is substantive can be decided with votes like all other comments.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - manojlds 10y ago
      Actually I skipped the last few paras after getting the initial tone of the article and this comment made me go back.
  - clort 10y ago
    Its disagreeable because "on average, <type> people earn more than <!type> people, therefore all <type> people should pay more for the same service" is not an obvious conclusion to make. In fact, it is tainting some folk with the faults that others with a similar attribute have and is in the end discriminatory and unfair because their height was not a choice they made. If the author had written that tall people should pay more because they are bigger and need a bigger space then that might have been more palatable, but in the end I'm not sure that the extra space is the significant factor, since I can sit upright easily in the vertical space allocated for everybody to walk through the plane. Do we also need to charge more for people with big hairstyles, or those who choose to wear high heels? Also, why is there a minimum cost for the average space needed, my partner (155cm) takes up less space than average!
    - djsumdog 10y ago
      I like your <type> statement because it draws to the bigger problems with generalizations. It's also the weird logic flow I see more and more in western culture. "Privilege" is a word I hear thrown around a lot today. Often times when people use that word, they do not realize they are making broad assumptions about other peoples' circumstances (typically) based on an ascribed attribute. To go even further in relation to this and air travel, is obesity ascribed or achieved? If you get charged extra for being tall, that's not something really in your control. Discriminating against an ascribed trait isn't really fair and is the reason for civil rights legislation. There are cases where it's difficult to determine if something is ascribed vs achieved. This is why laws for marriage equality have taken as long as they have in much of the world. In terms of obesity, we see the trends and we see it's increasing. This is something we can measure. Homosexuality was something that could be hidden, and therefore the measurements could easily be off as people may have lied in previous decades to fit in with social norms. Ultimately, fighting obesity has a lot to do with education, and changing some of the very wrong ideas we have about what is and isn't healthy food. But that's another matter. In the article, they're mostly describing airlines that weigh people to distribute loads on planes. That seems logical. Now in regards to airlines charging them a different price due to weight and fuel consumption, that gets into a very grey area of how we deal with the reasoning behind obesity, choice, human rights and market costs.
  - taneq 10y ago
    You could argue that a tall person should not be charged more than a short person for the same service, even if it costs more to provide it to them, on the basis that their height is a circumstance of their birth. You cannot make the same argument for someone who is obese, since their obesity is almost certainly a choice (or a result of lifestyle choices, depending how you look at it).
    - coldtea 10y ago
      >since their obesity is almost certainly a choice Citation needed. In fact there's a HUGE industry of obese people making the choice to lose weight (diet, gyms, etc) and failing.
      - chillacy 10y ago
        I think being obese is as much a choice as being poor is a choice: you're born into it and have obese friends who feedback into an inactive lifestyle. Escaping obesity is possible with hard work, as is escaping poverty, but its also not easy. That said, counting calories isn't that hard, but it does take discipline, and that's not easy.
        coldtea 10y ago
        >That said, counting calories isn't that hard, but it does take discipline, and that's not easy. Several studies have shown that we're not good in discipline at all, unless for people that it's innate. So discipline might be a factor out of our control too (genetic), and it's just the presence of people with more innate discipline (against genetic) that makes it achievable.
        chillacy 10y ago
        Yea that doesn't surprise me, though studies also say that we're strongly influenced by our peers and are largely creatures of habit, so there are definitely tricks around this like hanging out with others into fitness or even lurking on a fitness subreddit.
  - hillz 10y ago
    First, I agree with you. But to answer: One chooses to be obese more than one chooses to be tall, so arguing that tall people should have to pay more for their size while the obese shouldn't seems illogical.
    - thinkloop 10y ago
      > One chooses to be obese more than one chooses to be tall I wonder - have you ever tried weed? With a few foreign molecules in your system you can go from barely liking cookies to consuming 5 boxes without being able to stop. The satiation part of the brain is very sensitive. Imagine having to constantly fight similar urges because of slight mutations in that zone. I think physical make up could be indirectly the most important factor in determining weight, especially when it comes to extremes like obesity. edit: reworked phrasing
      - taneq 10y ago
        > Imagine what it would be like fighting similar feelings every second of every day because your satiation part of the brain is a bit off. Yeah, that's how I stay not-obese.
      - hueving 10y ago
        Yes, they choose because of poor diet choices, nobody is hooking up a tube of big macs to their faces. A quarter of the entire US population didn't suddenly catch a disease and become obese. Being sedentary and taking in 2500 calories a day is definitely a choice. A very small percentage of obese people have hunger as extreme as your 5 cookie box example. All it takes is not paying attention to caloric intake over a long period like 5 years.
        deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
        Smaug123 10y ago
        I'm not expressing an opinion about the causes of the current obesity problem, but your comment had the opposite effect on me than the effect you wanted. "A quarter of the entire US population didn't suddenly catch a disease and become obese." Why not? When you put it that way, it strikes me as pretty implausible that 'a quarter of the entire US population suddenly became lazy and started stuffing their faces for no good reason'. Epidemics have happened frequently before; bouts of mass overeating are historically rare.
  - coldtea 10y ago
    >Please expand on what you find disagreeable here, else the post is just white noise and not really appropriate for HN. Maybe don't assume what's "appropriate for HN" (unless something is obviously offensive or spam, etc)? Far from white noise, the parent pointed a specifically interesting (and inane) excerpt from the post. Whether you agree or disagree, it doesn't take much imagination to see what one can find appalling in that part. First, not sure if the author is half-joking, but the notion that tall people are fair game because they "earn substantially more money on average" is especially idiotic. Something true "on average" (and from statistics the poster read for specific cultures/countries) doesn't obviously apply to all members. Besides, rich people, whether short or tall, don't pay more for anything else they buy unless they they want too -- so again this would be just an arbitrary tax on tallness. Second, the post goes on to say that "the overweight and obese? They receive no such life benefits, and it feels rather cruel, if not illegal, to ask them to pay extra for the same service". Only it's obviously not about having benefits in other fields of life (!), it's about their weight's cost to the airline (more personal weight amounts to less cargo, more fuel etc). >But this is also a post from a blog, not an article from The Economist - I think the opinion is shallow and poorly thought out, but it's just an opinion. So?
    - kelnos 10y ago
      > Maybe don't assume what's "appropriate for HN" As members of the HN community, that is literally our job to do. Communities are maintained by agreeing on and enforcing norms. You may not agree with someone's assumptions about whether or not something is appropriate, but they are absolutely within their rights to make a value judgment based on that. > Far from white noise, the parent pointed a specifically interesting (and inane) excerpt from the post. Yes, but this is a discussion forum. Quoting a section of text and then "annotating" it with "Jesus..." is not discussion, and doesn't foster discussion, at least, no aside from the "yeah, no kidding" variety. Fortunately, in this case, someone has called the poster out on it, and has in the process started discussion about it, but that's in spite of the original, not because of it.
      - coldtea 10y ago
        >You may not agree with someone's assumptions about whether or not something is appropriate, but they are absolutely within their rights to make a value judgment based on that. As a member of the HN community, consider where this leads: endless flamewars and meta-discussions on comments, instead of TFA. Note also that I'm not against people speaking on what's "appropriate for HN" in general, just against particular uncalled for instances. If a comment is defamatory or off-topic etc, it's a fair game. >Quoting a section of text and then "annotating" it with "Jesus..." is not discussion, and doesn't foster discussion, at least, no aside from the "yeah, no kidding" variety. Quoting and exclamations are very much part of discussion. In fact, for quoting this should go without saying. From books to scientific papers and on to legendary literary or scholarly exchanges, you'll find extended use of quotations. It is an act of curation and highlighting. Same for the annotation "Jesus", that serves to give us a clear indication of what the commenter thought of the quotation (he doesn't approve of it). You claim that "it didn't foster discussion", but you are disproven in reality. Besides the distracting meta-discussion, the comment did foster discussion of that particular quote, which you can see in the thread below, with people arguing pro and against the very ideas expressed in the quote.
- dingo_bat 10y ago
  The tall hate is real. As a tall person myself (6'4''), I am open to paying a bit more for taller seats and a bit more leg space. Because of the absolute impossibility of the former, I have found myself avoiding less important trips altogether.
  - zeroer 10y ago
    I'm 6'2" and broad-shouldered. First class seats, while not taller, give more leg room and more width and are hence much more comfortable for me. Have you ever flown business or first class?
    - loeg 10y ago
      That costs a lot more than ordinary tickets. Often 2x.
      - seanmcdirmid 10y ago
        That is an understatement. If it was only 2X, I would fly business class more often when going between continents.
      - enobrev 10y ago
        They definitely are far more expensive. This is why I maintain loyalty with a frequent flyer program with an airline that has a generally decent business / first class. For shorter flights, I'll sit wherever and gain miles/points, but for anything 3+ hours, I'll use an upgrade (about 15k miles/points) for a better seat and service. This keeps the flights inexpensive, while opening up the option for more leg room when I really need it (I'm 6'6").
    - cm2012 10y ago
      Seriously, dude. That is some privilege.
      - zeroer 10y ago
        Sure, it' a privilege to fly business class. But dingo_bat explicitly said he would pay more. How would it not be relevant that paying more for better seats is actually an option.
- function_seven 10y ago
  It’s a joke. “(from this short writer’s perspective)” is the clue that the writer is joking about their small karmic victory over tall people.
  - p10_user 10y ago
    I smiled as I read it and took it to be a joke, but it might do the writer some good to be a little less subtle here. Admittedly I'm not very tall myself.
- oskarth 10y ago
  Sounds like something George Constanza would say.
  - Art_Van_Delay 10y ago
    WORLDS ARE COLLIDING.
- Johnny555 10y ago
  Hawaiian Airlines is not charging more for heavy passengers, they are delaying seat assignment and assigning seats based on weight (for better weight distribution): So Hawaiian Airlines instituted a new policy. People flying between Honolulu and American Samoa would no longer be able to select their seats before arriving at the airport. Instead, they would be assigned seats when they checked in so that the carrier could distribute their weight evenly around the plane. Ironically, Samoa Air (from their own country) does charge by weight: ...Samoa Air in 2013 became the first airline to charge passengers by weight.
  - tylerhou 10y ago
    I think the person's objection is that the logic presented in that paragraph is pretty terrible. (Otherwise, the paragraph reads like a bad joke, which should have no place in formal writing, especially not writing as reputable as the Economist.)
    - dagw 10y ago
      The Economist has always included the occasional joke and bad pun in its articles to lighten the mood. It's one of its charms.
- disposablezero 10y ago
  I had to move my mom to another seat on a recent flight because the adjacent passenger spilled into three seats total. Everyone was uncomfortable until the large passenger (American college American football player) occupied two seats after my mom moved to a luckily open seat. I'm on the side of horizontally/vertically large people need to pay for what they use, because forcing another passenger to stand for a 7 hour is ridiculously short-changing other paying customers. [0] Or throwing off the CG of a plane to where it may be uncontrollable and crash... yeah, I want that because people are too precious about their weighs. PS: I happen to be so tall as to be at the 0.1% percentile range and barely fit into any coach seat without folding my ankles into my pockets. Sports cars, clothes and shoes all have an PITA tax for being vertically-challenged. And I couldn't fit it an F-16 if I wanted to, fuck my life. LOL. 0. http://abcnews.go.com/US/passenger-forced-stand-obese-flyer-takes-seat/story?id=15017545 http://abcnews.go.com/US/passenger-forced-stand-obese-flyer-...
  - smcl 10y ago
    I've always heard "vertically challenged" as a short-person euphemism, it's funny to hear it refer to tall people in this context
- r00fus 10y ago
  As a shorter person, that sounds like flamebait indeed. Taller people have issues while flying that never really bother me, from having their knees bashed by seat reclines to having minimal elbow space.
- andrewclunn 10y ago
  I mean sometimes the neo Marxism is just laid bare. Forget safety, utilitarian fuel gains, or the discomfort of those forced to sit next to the severely obese... The real injustice is that we're punishing "victims" and should only punish those vile privileged folk! Truly a rage inducing attitude.
- groktor 10y ago
  i stopped reading at this point.
- wcummings 10y ago
  This is obviously a joke, in case "from this short writer's perspective" didn't give it away.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
shimon_e 10y ago
Informative video about giving a breakdown for the cost of flying: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Oe8T3AvydU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Oe8T3AvydU
Zeebrommer 10y ago
If the issue is crash safety and weight distribution, wouldn't very lightweight people pose as much of a problem?
- csydas 10y ago
  It is a concern and they do adjust for this. For example, undersold flights or flights with many absent passengers will temporarily redistribute passengers during take off to ensure "balance". On a recent flight from Minneapolis to Helsinki, we were extremely underbooked but the distribution of passengers was fairly even - the announcement from the flight crew was that we could move seats but only once we were at the cruisin altitude. I assume that there is some balance struck with averages on children, and it would explain random seat reassignments at the gate.
- adrianN 10y ago
  Weight distribution has cutoff at the lower end that is much closer to the normal weight than the cutoff at the upper end. Very petite people weigh maybe half as much as a normal person, whereas obese people can weigh four times as much as a normal person and still remain mobile.
- rlanday 10y ago
  Well, for that to be a problem, you’d need to have flights where you’re flying around a large number of lightweight people, which may not be a situation that’s presented itself. And even then, it’s probably a lot easier to unbalance the airplane by putting a bunch of very heavy people all on one side than by putting a bunch of lightweight people on one side and normal weight people on the other side (the weight differential between "overweight" and "normal weight" can be much larger than the differential between "underweight" and "normal weight").
  - Symbiote 10y ago
    Large numbers of lightweight people = a class of children, or a couple of large families. The only time I've ever been upgraded was when 80% of economy class was children on various school trips, and I was put in premium economy when I checked in.
_coldfire 10y ago
I struggle to see the problem other than human vanity as to why passengers aren't weighed with their luggage. If you can accept that your bag costs the airline more in fuel why not accept that your weight contributes also?
- aplummer 10y ago
  Because I'm not overweight, just 6"7. Why should I pay more to fly for being born tall? Should black people pay more overall for being taller on average? It's not vanity it's equality...
  - btbuildem 10y ago
    Perhaps we're going for equity, not equality..
    - aplummer 10y ago
      I don't understand what that means in this context?
      - benjiweber 10y ago
        This cartoon is often used to illustrate the difference http://interactioninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/IISC_EqualityEquity.png http://interactioninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/I...
  - marcoperaza 10y ago
    It also costs more for you to feed yourself than it does a shorter person. Is that also unfair? As a very pale-skinned person, I have to spend more on sunscreen. Is that unfair?
    - blhack 10y ago
      Airline tickets are sold per trip, not per-resource-used. If they were sold per-resource-used, heavier passengers would be able to offset this (negligible) cost by bringing less baggage, for instance.
Animats 10y ago
It's a big problem with smaller aircraft. A crash in 2003 [1] of an overloaded 19-passenger commuter aircraft out of Charlotte, NC led the FAA to require airlines to increase their assumed average passenger weight by 20-30 pounds. [1] http://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/AAR0401.pdf http://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/A...
- tunap 10y ago
  Will look at the report, but the last I heard it was the luggage shifting during initial lift-off that caused the control loss. I was pretty happy my brother drove to pick me up in Charlotte that morning. The other option was to take the Greenville leg, which is 30 miles closer to them.
JumpCrisscross 10y ago
> Hawaiian Airlines...discovered it was burning through more fuel than anticipated on its route between Honolulu and...American Samoa Why not just increase the ticket price?
- rlanday 10y ago
  Presumably they did that if the cost were an issue, the primary problem discussed in the article though is keeping weight balanced on the airplane so it doesn’t crash, not the cost of fuel.
yummyfajitas 10y ago
It costs more to lend money to black people even if FICO is held equal [1]. The lender doesn't care about your race, they care about your probability of repayment. Is it legitimate to charge people higher interest rates solely because they are black? It costs more to employ a woman, since she'll get sick more and poses a higher risk of vanishing into babyland. Is it legitimate to lower her wage commensurately? I don't know the answer to these questions. But unless you are willing to bite the bullet and endorse the racial/sexual discrimination I propose above, you don't have a clear answer either. [1] See this comment for calculations: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13156153#13167650 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13156153#13167650
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- benchaney 10y ago
  I think you are confusing two different issues. It is more expensive to lend money to black people because race is a predictor of poverty. Wealth can be measured directly, so discriminating based on race isn't really an effective strategy (ethics not withstanding). In the cost of fuel argument the root cause of the increase in cost is the weight of the passenger (it isn't just a predictor). The gender discrimination case is more complicated, but if companies want to modify wages based on expected medical leave required, I don't really see a problem with that.
  - yummyfajitas 10y ago
    No, that's simply not true. See the comment I linked to. A black person with a 600 FICO has a 40% chance of default, compared to an Asian person with a 600 FICO who has only a 20% chance of default. With identical financial indicators the black person is less likely to repay. Race discrimination is directly profitable, given the available data [1]. Now it's true that in this example it's just a predictor. The very nature of lending is stochastic. Then again, airplane crashes as a function of weight distribution are also stochastic. [1] It's theoretically possible - likely even - that some hidden data may reduce the influence of race. For example, lenders are required (more or less) to ignore location data since that could be "redlining".
gragas 10y ago
How can this possibly be discriminatory against Samoans when the airline explicitly stated that seating arrangements were to properly distribute weight on the aircrafts? 1. The airline's motives have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with race 2. The airline clearly explained its motives It's almost as if people actually don't understand what discrimination means.
- gleenn 10y ago
  I know a lot of people who would probably be too embarrassed to be weighed and wouldn't fly.
  - gragas 10y ago
    Perhaps they should work on their weight then? If this new practice affects the airline's profits, it'll solve the problem or take the losses.
    - snoman 10y ago
      You don't need to be overweight to be embarrassed to be weighed. If only my anorexic friend had known sooner that she just needed to work on her weight, she could have avoided things like nickel-and-diming airlines. (not only so I think the distribution claim is bogus, but it's a precursor to billing by passenger weight)
      - gragas 10y ago
        It's not the duty of airlines to cater to every mental illness. Are you suggesting that they stop the whole show because one person with a relatively rare disease might be too embarrassed to use their service?
      - hawaiianbrah 10y ago
        Elsewhere in this thread it was mentioned a Samoan airline actually already does charge by passenger weight.
kurren 10y ago
https://youtu.be/AvbuNj37Z8I https://youtu.be/AvbuNj37Z8I
mstodd 10y ago
You as an individual should pay more because you're an idiot
- dang 10y ago
  We've banned this account for violating the HN guidelines. If you don't want it to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and promise to abide by the rules in the future. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13268980 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13268980 and marked it off-topic.
  - mSparks 10y ago
    please take your life somewhere else.
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hoodoof 10y ago
It might have been more positive to redefine standard human weight as being heavier, and give discounts to smaller people.
kyberias 10y ago
Why are they fat?
hipaulshi 10y ago
Pilot here. Every airplane has a maximum weight it can fly. Different than cars, every airplanes also have an envelope where the center of gravity has to fall enter. If the center of gravity is behind the design envelope, airplane has a tendency to flip backward, stall on take off then crash, it has happened before. It could also means if the airplane enters a spin, the recover may not be possible. If the center of gravity is too forward, it will slow the cruising speed due to increased drag, much easier to stall during cruise and burning more fuel. So for every single flight, pilot or dispatch has to calculate those 2 numbers, for every passenger and baggage, and decide how many fuel to take on each flight. Of course, asking each passengers weight would be awkward at best, so airlines and FAA used an average body weight number to avoid this, it worked until 2003. An accident happened which killed 21 people on board a small transportation aircraft. It is found that the average body weight number FAA and airline used were outdated http://www.ntsb.gov/Investigations/AccidentReports/Pages/AAR0401.aspx http://www.ntsb.gov/Investigations/AccidentReports/Pages/AAR... FAA has since advised airlines that what FAA presumed average weight of its population has increased, and advised airlines to do the same. Of course, this will only work on average cases, and will fail if the sample group is out of average. Resampling has to be done to remain operating in the envelope, and if standard deviation is still out of normal, each individual weight has to be taken.
- giovannibajo1 10y ago
  In many half-empty flights, the crew allows passengers to freely change seats, after take off. Obviously only a few do, but wouldn't that be dangerous anyway, given your comment on balancing weigh?
  - jessaustin 10y ago
    TFA references "an American airline". Since we Americans are misanthropes, when we freely choose our seats we have a balancing tendency. Your concern would be more valid for populations who would naturally choose to sit together.
    - kahrkunne 10y ago
wodencafe 10y ago
There seems to be 2 distinct justifications for this. 1. The plane has to be at a safe weight to fly. I'm ok with this. 2. The airline wants to charge more money for heavier passengers. This is getting into discrimination territory.
sctb 10y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13268990 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13268990 and marked it off-topic.
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  In what way is it off topic? It directly addresses the point raised in the comment it is replying to.
  - sctb 10y ago
    When discussing controversial topics on Hacker News, we need to cleave to the topic at hand (weighing passengers for air travel, in this case) to avoid the threads degrading because of the already-heightened sensitivity. You can sometimes tell if you haven't succeeded by whether the ensuing subthread becomes about something else. It has here, predictably. Additionally, you've brought up specific topics of controversy which you've addressed several times before on this site without anything new to say about them. This is not in keeping with the guideline that asks us not to introduce classic flamewar topics.
    - yummyfajitas 10y ago
      You could have just said "hecklers veto" rather than "off topic". Would have been less confusing. I was confused because comment is pretty specifically on topic - it's directly illustrating why the ethics of height discrimination are not simple.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      - dang 10y ago
        Scott's traveling, but asked me to reply with "on reflection, that seems fair" and to take off the offtopic penalty. So I've done that.
    - deleted 10y ago
makecheck 10y ago
I recently flew a regional airline that had strict policies about bag weight (20 pounds or something). They had scales for luggage right there. Then I thought to myself: the difference between my weight and anyone a few inches taller — regardless of fat — could be way more than 20 pounds, especially given some muscle. It makes little sense to inconvenience people by checking bags that are slightly over-weight, while standing next to someone that is probably twice the difference. Maybe, then, a rule for bags is also based on the distribution of weight in the overhead bins, as well as the difficulty of knowing exactly where the heavy bags would be. People are easy to identify and move, bags probably need to be more uniform. Plus, it would encourage relatively small bags (to help with the space issue).

164 points by nether 10y ago

"Tall people earn substantially more money on average, and so it seems only fair (from this short writer’s perspective) that they experience a bit of added discomfort or have to shell out extra for a roomier seat. But the overweight and obese? They receive no such life benefits, and it feels rather cruel, if not illegal, to ask them to pay extra for the same service." Jesus...

boardwaalk 10y ago
I was just about to comment on that. Quite bizarre commentary for a Economist article.
csydas 10y ago
Please expand on what you find disagreeable here, else the post is just white noise and not really appropriate for HN. I do think the author's reasoning in that part is flawed and a bit vengeful simply because it seems to me like a misguided sense of justice and right/wrong, and that they want what they perceive as justice simply because of the circumstances of one's birth sometimes being a boon, sometimes being a burden. But this is also a post from a blog, not an article from The Economist - I think the opinion is shallow and poorly thought out, but it's just an opinion.
- demosthenes111 10y ago
  It's a completely ridiculous comment. This policy isn't about "fairness" but rather weight distribution and cost of fuel. Punishing tall people for being born tall and making more "on average" is absurd.
- jayjay71 10y ago
  "Please expand on what you find disagreeable here, else the post is just white noise and not really appropriate for HN." That comment piqued my curiosity enough for me to read the article, something which probably isn't true for over 99% of the comments I read on HN. So I strongly disagree with you that it isn't appropriate for HN. There is nothing defamatory in what he says, and whether or not it is substantive can be decided with votes like all other comments.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - manojlds 10y ago
    Actually I skipped the last few paras after getting the initial tone of the article and this comment made me go back.
- clort 10y ago
  Its disagreeable because "on average, <type> people earn more than <!type> people, therefore all <type> people should pay more for the same service" is not an obvious conclusion to make. In fact, it is tainting some folk with the faults that others with a similar attribute have and is in the end discriminatory and unfair because their height was not a choice they made. If the author had written that tall people should pay more because they are bigger and need a bigger space then that might have been more palatable, but in the end I'm not sure that the extra space is the significant factor, since I can sit upright easily in the vertical space allocated for everybody to walk through the plane. Do we also need to charge more for people with big hairstyles, or those who choose to wear high heels? Also, why is there a minimum cost for the average space needed, my partner (155cm) takes up less space than average!
  - djsumdog 10y ago
    I like your <type> statement because it draws to the bigger problems with generalizations. It's also the weird logic flow I see more and more in western culture. "Privilege" is a word I hear thrown around a lot today. Often times when people use that word, they do not realize they are making broad assumptions about other peoples' circumstances (typically) based on an ascribed attribute. To go even further in relation to this and air travel, is obesity ascribed or achieved? If you get charged extra for being tall, that's not something really in your control. Discriminating against an ascribed trait isn't really fair and is the reason for civil rights legislation. There are cases where it's difficult to determine if something is ascribed vs achieved. This is why laws for marriage equality have taken as long as they have in much of the world. In terms of obesity, we see the trends and we see it's increasing. This is something we can measure. Homosexuality was something that could be hidden, and therefore the measurements could easily be off as people may have lied in previous decades to fit in with social norms. Ultimately, fighting obesity has a lot to do with education, and changing some of the very wrong ideas we have about what is and isn't healthy food. But that's another matter. In the article, they're mostly describing airlines that weigh people to distribute loads on planes. That seems logical. Now in regards to airlines charging them a different price due to weight and fuel consumption, that gets into a very grey area of how we deal with the reasoning behind obesity, choice, human rights and market costs.
- taneq 10y ago
  You could argue that a tall person should not be charged more than a short person for the same service, even if it costs more to provide it to them, on the basis that their height is a circumstance of their birth. You cannot make the same argument for someone who is obese, since their obesity is almost certainly a choice (or a result of lifestyle choices, depending how you look at it).
  - coldtea 10y ago
    >since their obesity is almost certainly a choice Citation needed. In fact there's a HUGE industry of obese people making the choice to lose weight (diet, gyms, etc) and failing.
    - chillacy 10y ago
      I think being obese is as much a choice as being poor is a choice: you're born into it and have obese friends who feedback into an inactive lifestyle. Escaping obesity is possible with hard work, as is escaping poverty, but its also not easy. That said, counting calories isn't that hard, but it does take discipline, and that's not easy.
      - coldtea 10y ago
        >That said, counting calories isn't that hard, but it does take discipline, and that's not easy. Several studies have shown that we're not good in discipline at all, unless for people that it's innate. So discipline might be a factor out of our control too (genetic), and it's just the presence of people with more innate discipline (against genetic) that makes it achievable.
        chillacy 10y ago
        Yea that doesn't surprise me, though studies also say that we're strongly influenced by our peers and are largely creatures of habit, so there are definitely tricks around this like hanging out with others into fitness or even lurking on a fitness subreddit.
- hillz 10y ago
  First, I agree with you. But to answer: One chooses to be obese more than one chooses to be tall, so arguing that tall people should have to pay more for their size while the obese shouldn't seems illogical.
  - thinkloop 10y ago
    > One chooses to be obese more than one chooses to be tall I wonder - have you ever tried weed? With a few foreign molecules in your system you can go from barely liking cookies to consuming 5 boxes without being able to stop. The satiation part of the brain is very sensitive. Imagine having to constantly fight similar urges because of slight mutations in that zone. I think physical make up could be indirectly the most important factor in determining weight, especially when it comes to extremes like obesity. edit: reworked phrasing
    - taneq 10y ago
      > Imagine what it would be like fighting similar feelings every second of every day because your satiation part of the brain is a bit off. Yeah, that's how I stay not-obese.
    - hueving 10y ago
      Yes, they choose because of poor diet choices, nobody is hooking up a tube of big macs to their faces. A quarter of the entire US population didn't suddenly catch a disease and become obese. Being sedentary and taking in 2500 calories a day is definitely a choice. A very small percentage of obese people have hunger as extreme as your 5 cookie box example. All it takes is not paying attention to caloric intake over a long period like 5 years.
      - deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
      - Smaug123 10y ago
        I'm not expressing an opinion about the causes of the current obesity problem, but your comment had the opposite effect on me than the effect you wanted. "A quarter of the entire US population didn't suddenly catch a disease and become obese." Why not? When you put it that way, it strikes me as pretty implausible that 'a quarter of the entire US population suddenly became lazy and started stuffing their faces for no good reason'. Epidemics have happened frequently before; bouts of mass overeating are historically rare.
- coldtea 10y ago
  >Please expand on what you find disagreeable here, else the post is just white noise and not really appropriate for HN. Maybe don't assume what's "appropriate for HN" (unless something is obviously offensive or spam, etc)? Far from white noise, the parent pointed a specifically interesting (and inane) excerpt from the post. Whether you agree or disagree, it doesn't take much imagination to see what one can find appalling in that part. First, not sure if the author is half-joking, but the notion that tall people are fair game because they "earn substantially more money on average" is especially idiotic. Something true "on average" (and from statistics the poster read for specific cultures/countries) doesn't obviously apply to all members. Besides, rich people, whether short or tall, don't pay more for anything else they buy unless they they want too -- so again this would be just an arbitrary tax on tallness. Second, the post goes on to say that "the overweight and obese? They receive no such life benefits, and it feels rather cruel, if not illegal, to ask them to pay extra for the same service". Only it's obviously not about having benefits in other fields of life (!), it's about their weight's cost to the airline (more personal weight amounts to less cargo, more fuel etc). >But this is also a post from a blog, not an article from The Economist - I think the opinion is shallow and poorly thought out, but it's just an opinion. So?
  - kelnos 10y ago
    > Maybe don't assume what's "appropriate for HN" As members of the HN community, that is literally our job to do. Communities are maintained by agreeing on and enforcing norms. You may not agree with someone's assumptions about whether or not something is appropriate, but they are absolutely within their rights to make a value judgment based on that. > Far from white noise, the parent pointed a specifically interesting (and inane) excerpt from the post. Yes, but this is a discussion forum. Quoting a section of text and then "annotating" it with "Jesus..." is not discussion, and doesn't foster discussion, at least, no aside from the "yeah, no kidding" variety. Fortunately, in this case, someone has called the poster out on it, and has in the process started discussion about it, but that's in spite of the original, not because of it.
    - coldtea 10y ago
      >You may not agree with someone's assumptions about whether or not something is appropriate, but they are absolutely within their rights to make a value judgment based on that. As a member of the HN community, consider where this leads: endless flamewars and meta-discussions on comments, instead of TFA. Note also that I'm not against people speaking on what's "appropriate for HN" in general, just against particular uncalled for instances. If a comment is defamatory or off-topic etc, it's a fair game. >Quoting a section of text and then "annotating" it with "Jesus..." is not discussion, and doesn't foster discussion, at least, no aside from the "yeah, no kidding" variety. Quoting and exclamations are very much part of discussion. In fact, for quoting this should go without saying. From books to scientific papers and on to legendary literary or scholarly exchanges, you'll find extended use of quotations. It is an act of curation and highlighting. Same for the annotation "Jesus", that serves to give us a clear indication of what the commenter thought of the quotation (he doesn't approve of it). You claim that "it didn't foster discussion", but you are disproven in reality. Besides the distracting meta-discussion, the comment did foster discussion of that particular quote, which you can see in the thread below, with people arguing pro and against the very ideas expressed in the quote.
dingo_bat 10y ago
The tall hate is real. As a tall person myself (6'4''), I am open to paying a bit more for taller seats and a bit more leg space. Because of the absolute impossibility of the former, I have found myself avoiding less important trips altogether.
- zeroer 10y ago
  I'm 6'2" and broad-shouldered. First class seats, while not taller, give more leg room and more width and are hence much more comfortable for me. Have you ever flown business or first class?
  - loeg 10y ago
    That costs a lot more than ordinary tickets. Often 2x.
    - seanmcdirmid 10y ago
      That is an understatement. If it was only 2X, I would fly business class more often when going between continents.
    - enobrev 10y ago
      They definitely are far more expensive. This is why I maintain loyalty with a frequent flyer program with an airline that has a generally decent business / first class. For shorter flights, I'll sit wherever and gain miles/points, but for anything 3+ hours, I'll use an upgrade (about 15k miles/points) for a better seat and service. This keeps the flights inexpensive, while opening up the option for more leg room when I really need it (I'm 6'6").
  - cm2012 10y ago
    Seriously, dude. That is some privilege.
    - zeroer 10y ago
      Sure, it' a privilege to fly business class. But dingo_bat explicitly said he would pay more. How would it not be relevant that paying more for better seats is actually an option.
function_seven 10y ago
It’s a joke. “(from this short writer’s perspective)” is the clue that the writer is joking about their small karmic victory over tall people.
- p10_user 10y ago
  I smiled as I read it and took it to be a joke, but it might do the writer some good to be a little less subtle here. Admittedly I'm not very tall myself.
oskarth 10y ago
Sounds like something George Constanza would say.
- Art_Van_Delay 10y ago
  WORLDS ARE COLLIDING.
Johnny555 10y ago
Hawaiian Airlines is not charging more for heavy passengers, they are delaying seat assignment and assigning seats based on weight (for better weight distribution): So Hawaiian Airlines instituted a new policy. People flying between Honolulu and American Samoa would no longer be able to select their seats before arriving at the airport. Instead, they would be assigned seats when they checked in so that the carrier could distribute their weight evenly around the plane. Ironically, Samoa Air (from their own country) does charge by weight: ...Samoa Air in 2013 became the first airline to charge passengers by weight.
- tylerhou 10y ago
  I think the person's objection is that the logic presented in that paragraph is pretty terrible. (Otherwise, the paragraph reads like a bad joke, which should have no place in formal writing, especially not writing as reputable as the Economist.)
  - dagw 10y ago
    The Economist has always included the occasional joke and bad pun in its articles to lighten the mood. It's one of its charms.
disposablezero 10y ago
I had to move my mom to another seat on a recent flight because the adjacent passenger spilled into three seats total. Everyone was uncomfortable until the large passenger (American college American football player) occupied two seats after my mom moved to a luckily open seat. I'm on the side of horizontally/vertically large people need to pay for what they use, because forcing another passenger to stand for a 7 hour is ridiculously short-changing other paying customers. [0] Or throwing off the CG of a plane to where it may be uncontrollable and crash... yeah, I want that because people are too precious about their weighs. PS: I happen to be so tall as to be at the 0.1% percentile range and barely fit into any coach seat without folding my ankles into my pockets. Sports cars, clothes and shoes all have an PITA tax for being vertically-challenged. And I couldn't fit it an F-16 if I wanted to, fuck my life. LOL. 0. http://abcnews.go.com/US/passenger-forced-stand-obese-flyer-takes-seat/story?id=15017545 http://abcnews.go.com/US/passenger-forced-stand-obese-flyer-...
- smcl 10y ago
  I've always heard "vertically challenged" as a short-person euphemism, it's funny to hear it refer to tall people in this context
r00fus 10y ago
As a shorter person, that sounds like flamebait indeed. Taller people have issues while flying that never really bother me, from having their knees bashed by seat reclines to having minimal elbow space.
andrewclunn 10y ago
I mean sometimes the neo Marxism is just laid bare. Forget safety, utilitarian fuel gains, or the discomfort of those forced to sit next to the severely obese... The real injustice is that we're punishing "victims" and should only punish those vile privileged folk! Truly a rage inducing attitude.
groktor 10y ago
i stopped reading at this point.
wcummings 10y ago
This is obviously a joke, in case "from this short writer's perspective" didn't give it away.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

shimon_e 10y ago

Informative video about giving a breakdown for the cost of flying: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Oe8T3AvydU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Oe8T3AvydU

Zeebrommer 10y ago

If the issue is crash safety and weight distribution, wouldn't very lightweight people pose as much of a problem?

csydas 10y ago
It is a concern and they do adjust for this. For example, undersold flights or flights with many absent passengers will temporarily redistribute passengers during take off to ensure "balance". On a recent flight from Minneapolis to Helsinki, we were extremely underbooked but the distribution of passengers was fairly even - the announcement from the flight crew was that we could move seats but only once we were at the cruisin altitude. I assume that there is some balance struck with averages on children, and it would explain random seat reassignments at the gate.
adrianN 10y ago
Weight distribution has cutoff at the lower end that is much closer to the normal weight than the cutoff at the upper end. Very petite people weigh maybe half as much as a normal person, whereas obese people can weigh four times as much as a normal person and still remain mobile.
rlanday 10y ago
Well, for that to be a problem, you’d need to have flights where you’re flying around a large number of lightweight people, which may not be a situation that’s presented itself. And even then, it’s probably a lot easier to unbalance the airplane by putting a bunch of very heavy people all on one side than by putting a bunch of lightweight people on one side and normal weight people on the other side (the weight differential between "overweight" and "normal weight" can be much larger than the differential between "underweight" and "normal weight").
- Symbiote 10y ago
  Large numbers of lightweight people = a class of children, or a couple of large families. The only time I've ever been upgraded was when 80% of economy class was children on various school trips, and I was put in premium economy when I checked in.

_coldfire 10y ago

I struggle to see the problem other than human vanity as to why passengers aren't weighed with their luggage. If you can accept that your bag costs the airline more in fuel why not accept that your weight contributes also?

aplummer 10y ago
Because I'm not overweight, just 6"7. Why should I pay more to fly for being born tall? Should black people pay more overall for being taller on average? It's not vanity it's equality...
- btbuildem 10y ago
  Perhaps we're going for equity, not equality..
  - aplummer 10y ago
    I don't understand what that means in this context?
    - benjiweber 10y ago
      This cartoon is often used to illustrate the difference http://interactioninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/IISC_EqualityEquity.png http://interactioninstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/I...
- marcoperaza 10y ago
  It also costs more for you to feed yourself than it does a shorter person. Is that also unfair? As a very pale-skinned person, I have to spend more on sunscreen. Is that unfair?
  - blhack 10y ago
    Airline tickets are sold per trip, not per-resource-used. If they were sold per-resource-used, heavier passengers would be able to offset this (negligible) cost by bringing less baggage, for instance.

Animats 10y ago

It's a big problem with smaller aircraft. A crash in 2003 [1] of an overloaded 19-passenger commuter aircraft out of Charlotte, NC led the FAA to require airlines to increase their assumed average passenger weight by 20-30 pounds. [1] http://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/AAR0401.pdf http://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/A...

tunap 10y ago
Will look at the report, but the last I heard it was the luggage shifting during initial lift-off that caused the control loss. I was pretty happy my brother drove to pick me up in Charlotte that morning. The other option was to take the Greenville leg, which is 30 miles closer to them.

JumpCrisscross 10y ago

> Hawaiian Airlines...discovered it was burning through more fuel than anticipated on its route between Honolulu and...American Samoa Why not just increase the ticket price?

rlanday 10y ago
Presumably they did that if the cost were an issue, the primary problem discussed in the article though is keeping weight balanced on the airplane so it doesn’t crash, not the cost of fuel.

yummyfajitas 10y ago

It costs more to lend money to black people even if FICO is held equal [1]. The lender doesn't care about your race, they care about your probability of repayment. Is it legitimate to charge people higher interest rates solely because they are black? It costs more to employ a woman, since she'll get sick more and poses a higher risk of vanishing into babyland. Is it legitimate to lower her wage commensurately? I don't know the answer to these questions. But unless you are willing to bite the bullet and endorse the racial/sexual discrimination I propose above, you don't have a clear answer either. [1] See this comment for calculations: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13156153#13167650 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13156153#13167650

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
benchaney 10y ago
I think you are confusing two different issues. It is more expensive to lend money to black people because race is a predictor of poverty. Wealth can be measured directly, so discriminating based on race isn't really an effective strategy (ethics not withstanding). In the cost of fuel argument the root cause of the increase in cost is the weight of the passenger (it isn't just a predictor). The gender discrimination case is more complicated, but if companies want to modify wages based on expected medical leave required, I don't really see a problem with that.
- yummyfajitas 10y ago
  No, that's simply not true. See the comment I linked to. A black person with a 600 FICO has a 40% chance of default, compared to an Asian person with a 600 FICO who has only a 20% chance of default. With identical financial indicators the black person is less likely to repay. Race discrimination is directly profitable, given the available data [1]. Now it's true that in this example it's just a predictor. The very nature of lending is stochastic. Then again, airplane crashes as a function of weight distribution are also stochastic. [1] It's theoretically possible - likely even - that some hidden data may reduce the influence of race. For example, lenders are required (more or less) to ignore location data since that could be "redlining".

gragas 10y ago

How can this possibly be discriminatory against Samoans when the airline explicitly stated that seating arrangements were to properly distribute weight on the aircrafts? 1. The airline's motives have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with race 2. The airline clearly explained its motives It's almost as if people actually don't understand what discrimination means.

gleenn 10y ago
I know a lot of people who would probably be too embarrassed to be weighed and wouldn't fly.
- gragas 10y ago
  Perhaps they should work on their weight then? If this new practice affects the airline's profits, it'll solve the problem or take the losses.
  - snoman 10y ago
    You don't need to be overweight to be embarrassed to be weighed. If only my anorexic friend had known sooner that she just needed to work on her weight, she could have avoided things like nickel-and-diming airlines. (not only so I think the distribution claim is bogus, but it's a precursor to billing by passenger weight)
    - gragas 10y ago
      It's not the duty of airlines to cater to every mental illness. Are you suggesting that they stop the whole show because one person with a relatively rare disease might be too embarrassed to use their service?
    - hawaiianbrah 10y ago
      Elsewhere in this thread it was mentioned a Samoan airline actually already does charge by passenger weight.

kurren 10y ago

https://youtu.be/AvbuNj37Z8I https://youtu.be/AvbuNj37Z8I

mstodd 10y ago

You as an individual should pay more because you're an idiot

dang 10y ago
We've banned this account for violating the HN guidelines. If you don't want it to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and promise to abide by the rules in the future. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13268980 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13268980 and marked it off-topic.
- mSparks 10y ago
  please take your life somewhere else.

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hoodoof 10y ago

It might have been more positive to redefine standard human weight as being heavier, and give discounts to smaller people.

kyberias 10y ago

Why are they fat?

hipaulshi 10y ago

Pilot here. Every airplane has a maximum weight it can fly. Different than cars, every airplanes also have an envelope where the center of gravity has to fall enter. If the center of gravity is behind the design envelope, airplane has a tendency to flip backward, stall on take off then crash, it has happened before. It could also means if the airplane enters a spin, the recover may not be possible. If the center of gravity is too forward, it will slow the cruising speed due to increased drag, much easier to stall during cruise and burning more fuel. So for every single flight, pilot or dispatch has to calculate those 2 numbers, for every passenger and baggage, and decide how many fuel to take on each flight. Of course, asking each passengers weight would be awkward at best, so airlines and FAA used an average body weight number to avoid this, it worked until 2003. An accident happened which killed 21 people on board a small transportation aircraft. It is found that the average body weight number FAA and airline used were outdated http://www.ntsb.gov/Investigations/AccidentReports/Pages/AAR0401.aspx http://www.ntsb.gov/Investigations/AccidentReports/Pages/AAR... FAA has since advised airlines that what FAA presumed average weight of its population has increased, and advised airlines to do the same. Of course, this will only work on average cases, and will fail if the sample group is out of average. Resampling has to be done to remain operating in the envelope, and if standard deviation is still out of normal, each individual weight has to be taken.

giovannibajo1 10y ago
In many half-empty flights, the crew allows passengers to freely change seats, after take off. Obviously only a few do, but wouldn't that be dangerous anyway, given your comment on balancing weigh?
- jessaustin 10y ago
  TFA references "an American airline". Since we Americans are misanthropes, when we freely choose our seats we have a balancing tendency. Your concern would be more valid for populations who would naturally choose to sit together.
  - kahrkunne 10y ago

wodencafe 10y ago

There seems to be 2 distinct justifications for this. 1. The plane has to be at a safe weight to fly. I'm ok with this. 2. The airline wants to charge more money for heavier passengers. This is getting into discrimination territory.

sctb 10y ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13268990 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13268990 and marked it off-topic.

yummyfajitas 10y ago
In what way is it off topic? It directly addresses the point raised in the comment it is replying to.
- sctb 10y ago
  When discussing controversial topics on Hacker News, we need to cleave to the topic at hand (weighing passengers for air travel, in this case) to avoid the threads degrading because of the already-heightened sensitivity. You can sometimes tell if you haven't succeeded by whether the ensuing subthread becomes about something else. It has here, predictably. Additionally, you've brought up specific topics of controversy which you've addressed several times before on this site without anything new to say about them. This is not in keeping with the guideline that asks us not to introduce classic flamewar topics.
  - yummyfajitas 10y ago
    You could have just said "hecklers veto" rather than "off topic". Would have been less confusing. I was confused because comment is pretty specifically on topic - it's directly illustrating why the ethics of height discrimination are not simple.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - dang 10y ago
      Scott's traveling, but asked me to reply with "on reflection, that seems fair" and to take off the offtopic penalty. So I've done that.
  - deleted 10y ago

makecheck 10y ago

I recently flew a regional airline that had strict policies about bag weight (20 pounds or something). They had scales for luggage right there. Then I thought to myself: the difference between my weight and anyone a few inches taller — regardless of fat — could be way more than 20 pounds, especially given some muscle. It makes little sense to inconvenience people by checking bags that are slightly over-weight, while standing next to someone that is probably twice the difference. Maybe, then, a rule for bags is also based on the distribution of weight in the overhead bins, as well as the difficulty of knowing exactly where the heavy bags would be. People are easy to identify and move, bags probably need to be more uniform. Plus, it would encourage relatively small bags (to help with the space issue).