Monday, May 26, 2008

Airlines: We're all treated fairly?

Recently I’ve been doing a good amount of flying, much of it back and forth across the Atlantic. As I checked in for a flight yesterday I was charged for excess baggage weight. I knew that I would be and for the most part I’m fine with it. It’s a reasonable charge. Extra weight causes a plane to burn extra fuel and reduces the amount of revenue they can earn carrying other packages. This is simply the cost for me of some of the extra stuff I’ve had to carry.

Checking in ahead of me was a woman who weighed at least 250 lbs and likely over 300. From the looks of it her luggage was right at the 50 lb max as well. She was not charged for any extra weight. I weigh 160 lbs and had a 62 lb bag. Even without her luggage she weighed considerably more than me and my luggage. While this has never seemed fair, I’ve had more pressing issues than to worry about it too much.

Guess who was sitting in the seat next to me on the flight? Guess who couldn’t fit in just her own seat but flowed over in to my space? This wasn’t the first time I’ve had someone flow over in to my seat and on most airlines the flight attendants are sympathetic and try to make arrangements that will be more comfortable for both. Unfortunately this was a completely full flight so there was nothing they could do though one did apologize to me. The good news was that it was only a 1 hour flight and not 9 hours.

I paid more to fly less weight than she did to fly more weight and I got considerably less seat room than she did as well.

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