The world is a fatter place now than it ever was before and to prove just how much that is the case, Samoa Air, which flies turboprop flights within the Samoan islands has revealed their new booking-procedure: by the weight.
Yes, after years of it being discussed as a possibility Samoa Air has taken it from a concept to a policy.
The BBC reports "passengers pay a fixed price per kilogram, which varies depending on the route length."
The Sydney Morning Herald takes the BBC report even further by stating how the airline's "rates vary depending on the distance flown: from $1 per kilogram (one kilogram equals about 2.2 pounds) on the airline's shortest domestic route to about $4.16 per kilogram for travel between Samoa and American Samoa. Passengers are then weighed again on scales at the airport, to check that they weren't fibbing online."
Samoa Air's CEO Chris Langton hopes his airline's policy "has raised the awareness of weight" in Samoa, a country that the Morning Herald notes has a serious obesity problem and is often included in the top 10 countries for obesity levels."
Now, when reading this, many will feel that it is offensive towards obese people, but what about the other side of weight spectrum?
"People who have been most pleasantly surprised are families, because we don't charge on the seat requirement even though a child is required to have a seat, we just weigh them," Langton told Australia's ABC News radio.
He added that " a family of maybe two adults and a couple of mid-sized kids and younger children can travel at considerably less than what they were being charged before."
What this new policy also does is address the aircrafts' safety concerns because as Langton stated to Australia's ABC News radio, "Aeroplanes [sic] don't run on seats, they run on weight. The smaller the aircraft you're in, the less variance you can accept in terms of the differences in weights between passengers."
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
