Should passengers have to pay for their plane tickets depending on how much they weigh? That's what a chief economist believes.
Bharat P Bhatta, an academic in Norway, wrote about the idea in the Journal of Revenue and Pricing Management in Norway. He suggested that overweight passengers should pay more in order to help airlines make up for the loss of extra fuel required to carry them.
He has three methods for how this could be done. One method is to develop a price strictly based on the number of kilograms the person weighs. Another option is having a fixed low fare which requires heavier passengers to pay a fee while lighter passenger get a discount. Another option is to divide passengers into three categories-heavy, normal and light and charge them based on what category they fall in.
"I think the simplest way to implement this would be for passengers to declare their weight when buying a plane ticket," Dr Bhatta at Sogn og Fjordane University College told The Daily Telegraph. "This would save time and eliminate expense.
"At the airport airlines could randomly select passengers and if they lied about their weight they would have to pay the fat fare and a penalty."
Airlines has already implanted some rules that require certain heavier passengers to pay a bit extra. For instance, on British Airways, passengers who can't fit in a seat properly are given a seat belt extension for free. If they still can't fit even with the extension, they are required to buy a second seat on the plane.
Not everyone is happy with this form of discrimination. Last year, overwight passenger Kenlie Tiggeman sued Southwest Airlines for for "discriminatory actions ... toward obese customers," ABC notes. Alos in 2012, actor Kevin Smith went on a Twitter rant against Southwest after he was removed from the plane for being too big for the seat.
However some agree with Dr. Bhatta's idea.
"For airlines, every extra kilogram means more expensive jet fuel must be burned, which leads to CO2 emissions and financial cost," Ian Yeoman, the editor of the Journal said, according to Skift.
"As the airline industry is fraught with financial difficulties, marginally profitable and has seen exponential growth in the last decade, maybe they should be looking to introduce scales at the check-in."
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
