

Weigh more, pay more: Argument for charging obese people higher flying fares - rahulrg
http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/weigh-more--pay-more

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slimdizzy
The author dilutes and weakens his argument by bringing up obesity. Whether a
80kg person is 40% fat or 10% fat doesn't matter; the central point is that a
person who weighs more, consumes more, and thus ought to pay more. I wish he
stuck more to that point instead of running off on the tangent about health
and the environment.

Friends with whom I discuss this proposal often say that many obese people
cannot help being overweight – they just have a different metabolism from the
rest of us.

To expand on the author's take on why this argument is weak, take for example
nearsighted people. Nearsightedness is partly hereditary; similar to obesity,
it can be exacerbated by certain choices, but some people are just bound to be
nearsighted. Nearsightedness means paying for glasses (at least the
deductible) and often paying a huge premium for sunglasses. Simply put: life
isn't fair, and people are already paying different expenses just because of
conditions they were born with.

Tony Webber, a former chief economist for the Australian airline Qantas, has
pointed out that, since 2000, the average weight of adult passengers on its
planes has increased by two kilos. For a large, modern aircraft like the
Airbus A380, that means that an extra $472 of fuel has to be burned on a
flight from Sydney to London.

That said, is such an initiative necessary, cost-saving, or beneficial to the
customer? An Airbus A380 holds about 600 passengers. That comes out to about
$0.75 per passenger per 2 kilograms.

A pretty average American man weights about 85kg. A very light American man
(bottom 5%) weighs about 65kg. A very heavy American man (top 5%) weighs about
115kg. (Pulling data from this chart). This means that the lightest 5% of men
would pay about $7.50 less for a Sydney-London flight than average, and the
heaviest 5% of men would pay about $11.75 more. On a shorter, domestic flight
like Chicago-NYC, those figures work out to maybe a $5 difference in ticket
price between a 65kg man and a 115kg man - and that's not even counting in the
extra costs associated with spending time on weighing passengers!

So with that taken into account, I don't think that this is the best idea.
Maybe extremely heavy people who are literally spilling over into the seat
next to them should be forced to purchase two seats or upgrade to a roomier
first class seat, because it's not fair for the poor guy sitting next to him.
But the weight-to-fuel-price argument seems to not be strong enough. Maybe
it'll be worth revisiting if fuel prices climb significantly.

~~~
tomp
There is a lot of evidence that obesity is not hereditary/predetermined, but
is a choice (or a consequence of a weak mind/bad incentives).

I was in Vietnam 5 years ago. I didn't see any fat people. Look at
photos/documentaries of Africa. No fat people.

To take it to the extreme, there were no fat people in Auschwitz. That is not
to say that it was good in any way and that people should starve, but just
that it is not impossible to be normal for anyone, you just have to try.

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heretohelp
Obesity is 100% calories in/calories out.

Good thing I'm at a startup trying to help people eat healthy and in
reasonable portions without feeling unduly hungry.

~~~
moonchrome
Sarcasm ? I mean I'm not saying that people crying about genetics and how they
can't help it aren't just wining but AFAIK it matters very much what kind your
diet consists of and how physically fit you are ie. carbs, insulin sensitivity
and muscle mass are crucial factors, calories in/out seem waay to simplistic.

~~~
vacri
It is too simplistic - the human body has all sorts of hystereses in it, and
doesn't work on a linear scale with calories. That being said, improving diet
and using appropriate quantities is a fairly common solution - if people can
stick to it, they'll generally be better off.

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heretohelp
If you eat less than you burn, you will lose weight.

The tricky part is in making it easier to eat less than you burn.

Eating healthier food that better sates you inside some kind of structure will
help you accomplish that.

Our product will solve all of those problems as well as take the pain out of
meal planning even for people not trying to necessarily lose weight.

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mjburgess
Should we charge more for disabled people?

Does any additional cost to a company mean that it can treat its customers
differently?

We must have a society where the equality of people is incontrovertible, and
we make accommodations for the fact. That a thin small woman weighing 50Kg is
worth the same as a muscular or fat person weighing 100kg.

To ask one to pay more for a service _because_ of what they are is unequal
treatment.

The people weighing less are charged more than they would be otherwise, so
that everyone has the same price.

But their arbitrary birth characteristics that make them under the average
weight should not entitle them to benefit in "proportion" nor equally should
the characteristics of another cause them to be disadvantaged proportionally.

I would prefer a society where neither the state, nor private citizens, were
able to reward birth-lottery success at the expense of birth-lottery failure.

And im not talking about genetics. Being muscular or fat, a result of a series
of choices (no doubt), is still a result of birth lottery. So you had a single
mum in a por community that fed you cheap fast food?

Do members disadvantaged communities (who are more overweight and unhealthy
than the average) have their disadvantage compounded by being responsible for
their parents and community?

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kristiandupont
This is a good point, but surely you will agree that we can only discuss where
to draw the line, not whether it should be drawn or not?

As said in another post, life is not fair. If we take your point to the
extreme, society should even out the disadvantages that come from having
below-average intelligence.

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mjburgess
Well there are many competing princilpes, and the way we prioritize them will
affect the kind of society we end up with.

I believe in this instance, the benefits of equality outweight the costs.

If we believe that a "free" market would distribute prices differently so that
lighter people paid less _and_ you believe the free market price is _fair_.
Then some small ecnomic harm is occuring, to those who pay more.

The social cost of rectifying this small harm however is, i think,
considerable. It makes transportation harder for poorer people and perhaps
those that need transport the most. And so on.

In this case, i think the $500 extra /flight can be distributed across the
couple hundred passengers without much to-do.

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VolatileVoid
The reason, generally, you are charged more for heavier luggage has got
nothing to do with jet fuel consumption and everything to do with higher
baggage handling fees. Since handlers don't actually have to carry obese
people (that's a job for the person's legs), it makes complete sense to charge
for heavier luggage rather than heavier people.

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masklinn
Baggage handlers are not paid by baggage weight, so that does not make much
sense. Jet fuel consumption, on the other hand, is heavily impacted by
airframe weight.

~~~
piggity
I suspect the fees aren't always about cost, but rather a subtle encouragement
to customers to do certain activities.

I had a bike bag weighing 27kg and a second piece weighing 15kg. Well under
the 46kg I could take on for no charge.

The airline (Qantas) wanted to charge me an overweight charge for the bike bag
- but were happy for me to park in front of the counter for 5 minutes while I
moved heavy items between bags to balance them out.

I didn't really care; it was a financial motivation to keep my weights at an
easier to manage level.

I imagine that overweight bags require different workers, who might be on a
different pay scale - and so there is a cost to moving 27+15kg vs 22kg+20kg.

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fab13n
Paying by the kg, whether kg of flesh/fat or kg of luggage, wouldn't be
absurd. The kg of fat might be a bit cheaper, though: you need luggage crew to
haul luggage, but most haul themselves autonomously.

A reason to impose penalty on luggage weight is that it affects what people
bring aboard: penalties might entice you to leave some luggage at home; they
won't entice you to leave your rolls of fat on the ground.

But companies won't start selling airfares by the kg: for it to be workable,
you'd need a clear pricing scheme, and that's not in their best interest.

~~~
vacri
It's not the pricing scheme, it's the invasion of privacy that people will arc
up about. Someone who is sensitive about their weight - and there are a lot of
them - will be very difficult to manage in this situation.

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fab13n
You mean, the privacy of those people who will be scanned and groped by TSA
thugs minutes after they've checked their luggage in?

It seems that people are ready to give up the last bit of dignity as soon as
they enter an airport; if a company could offer a substantial discount in
exchange for paying by the kg, many people would cope with it. Not everyone,
but enough people to sustain an airline company.

The reason why it won't happen is because their pricing scheme is already
optimized to extract the last dime each traveler is willing to pay.
Introducing a weight variable would mess that system up.

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vacri
The article is from Melbourne, Australia. We don't have scanners or pat-downs.

But anyway, I used to work in a call centre doing anonymous cold-calling
social surveys for government. One survey had a section on sexual abuse and
rape - and a few of us found it odd that some respondants would open up their
private lives answering these questions, sometimes in a fair amount of detail,
but still balk at the standard demographic section at the end where they are
asked their income bracket. Some magic numbers are more significant than
others.

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DrJokepu
Measuring people's weight would make the already humiliating experience at
airports even worse for many people, especially for women. Imagine the
humiliation a female (over even a male) passenger would experience when she's
flagged at the airport as overweight in front of her friends, family or
colleagues.

This is an incredibly bad idea and it would be a PR and commercial disaster
for any airline or airport that would introduce such a scheme.

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kylec
I can't wait for passenger rail to take off in the US. The weight of the
passengers is virtually inconsequential - CSX has advertized that they can
transport 1 ton of freight 436 miles on a single gallon of diesel fuel.
Obviously people aren't freight, but even if it ends up being 10x that amount
of passengers, that's still pennies for an increased cost if someone is
overweight or obese.

~~~
daeken
I'm in the US and way overweight even by American standards, and I take the
train everywhere. I'm in NYC and I can easily go to Boston, Philadelphia,
Pittsburgh, DC, or even Toronto via Amtrak. Certainly takes longer than a
plane, but the comfort is worth it for me. If only there were trains to
Europe.

~~~
vacri
Tickets are subsidised in the south, too. You can cover a lot of ground for
not much money. Get up, walk around, plenty of space, power outlets at the
seats, no air pressure issues, something to look at through nice big windows
instead of clouds through a tiny window if you're right next to it, no
security procedures... there's a lot going for the train.

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shakesbeard
If weight is a driver for costs, do we get a rebate or fee when only half of a
flight's seats are taken?

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vacri
_Yet, in terms of the airplane’s fuel consumption, it is all the same whether
the extra weight is baggage or body fat._

... because as we all know, there is no cost whatsoever in handling large
amounts of luggage. Which do you think would cost more: 100kg per person, with
fat people who had little luggage, or 100kg per person, 50kg in person, and
50kg is excess luggage.

As a tall man, I hate this stupid point. I can't help the fact that I'm tall.
I'm perhaps 10-15kg overweight, but if I go below 110kg, I am unhealthy. I
already have to pay more to get a seat that doesn't screw me up - a seat that
still doesn't fit me properly. Meanwhile Ms Slight Asian Woman is getting a
much more comfortable seat. She's getting a better service for the same price.

The thing is, it's swings and roundabouts, and wanting to charge people a 'fat
fee' is oversimplistic.

~~~
moonchrome
>As a tall man, I hate this stupid point. I can't help the fact that I'm tall.
I'm perhaps 10-15kg overweight, but if I go below 110kg, I am unhealthy. I
already have to pay more to get a seat that doesn't screw me up - a seat that
still doesn't fit me properly. Meanwhile Ms Slight Asian Woman is getting a
much more comfortable seat. She's getting a better service for the same price.

Well even you admit that you require a special seat and that "Ms Slight Asian
Woman" gets comfortable in a normal seat - so there is a reason for the price
difference. Anyway this sort of things are best left to market competition, if
it's efficient to charge for baggage more than body weight then the companies
or if the decision hurts their image they will figure it out.

~~~
vacri
I think you missed my point. I am paying extra for a bulkhead seat that _still
does not fit me as well_ as a standard seat for the 'light person' - I get a
worse service for more money. Then the guy in the article says I should pay
even more, simply to appease his sense of misplaced righteousness.

~~~
moonchrome
I think you put it nicely - you think you're buying a service, this guy is
arguing you're buying weight transfer, I would say you're buying seats, and
whatever model makes the most sense should be used by the airline company.

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zeeed
it's overdue that science steps in and makes this point.

~~~
vacri
Please don't sully the term 'science' by association with this drivel.

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iamgopal
I do not think the actual different is much unless the person is really
overweight or underweight. And because of so much additional investment in to
infrastructure and training required, it is pretty stupid to actually
implement the idea.

That said, it will be bad argument to say that it will punish the people for
more weight, because at current price they are actually punishing
underweighted and have them pay for the overweighted. ( poor fellas, they are
underweighted and have to pay for it too. )

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antihero
I don't think 75KG is a good standard weight. I mean, what about people who
are muscular? I go to the gym and nobody I know would say I am obese (I am a
little overweight) but because of muscles I'm around 109KG - I was 100KG and
overweight, now I'm thinner and stronger but actually heavier.

So should people who are muscular be exempt? Do we do it based on height vs
muscle or body fat percentage?

Unless we consider this, there's no way to do it fairly without punishing
people for things either they can't control or would in other contexts be a
good thing.

~~~
bpodgursky
It's not about rewarding you for being healthy, it's about charging people for
the resources (eg, jet fuel) which they consume. Whether your weight is from
fat or muscles, you are costing the airline more than the 75kg person next to
you.

~~~
kenver
You're right about the main thrust of the article, however a significant part
of the article did argue about health issues, obesity and taxing unhealthy
living, which I think weakened his argument somewhat. So as a counter to that
side of the piece, I think it's ok to mention the difference between
muscle/fat etc.

