Pound for pound the best seat in the house
Obese people and airplanes, comedians love that one. Airlines not so much. Then again maybe they do. KLM figured large people can pay for two seats. Their argument, safety.
First off I’d like to say it’s up to the owners of KLM to deal with these issues and up to the passengers to cope with them. The final say most definitely is with the KLM. And it’s the passenger’s job to fight these kinds of things in court.
Having said that…
how does that work out? Last time I was in a plane the size of the seats wasn’t all that great. I’m tall enough to have my knees embedded into the tray table thing and fat enough to be just about uncomfortable between those two standard-sized arm rests made of armour plated plastic or whatever. Fine, it fits. Sort of. Let’s go ahead and put someone bigger in that seat, bigger in all possible dimensions. How would it be safer for that person in two seats? The arm rest doesn’t move. Surely it can’t be two seats next to each other. That leaves that you’re paying for your second seat ahead of you. That’d work for people who need the leg room provied they are willing to REMOVE the seat, but not if you’re a particularly wide specimen of the human species.
Ok, so I can’t work out for you why they want you to buy two seats. I also don’t know how this would improve safety.
Since you’re buying two seats, do you get two meals, two blankets, twice the amount of luggage on board? If the plane crashes and you die a horrible death, is your charred corpose with the chair number attached to it noted as yours on the passenger list? Well whatever. What the KLM is getting from this is an excuse to sell two chairs for one person if they are big, less weight on the same amount of seats (read: less fuel etc) and on the whole less uncomfortable passengers.
Here’s what I think they should do. Stop using people as a unit. Have people, just like luggage, factored in as weight. That’s all they are anyway to an airline company. At least be honest about it. That way everyone pays the same amount for the trip, since it’s based on their total weight. Add people on the luggage weigh in.
Did anyone else notice that the date when this starts is april 1st. This seems like a very well planned april fools joke to me.
January 25th, 2010 at 01:15
You know, charging per kilogram of loaded cargo, be it suitcase, carry-on, fat arse or what, that’s a very good idea.
Except people like to pay in advance or carry on some souvenir they picked up at a Bangkok flea market. Any practical way of charging per kilogram would be awesome. I just doubt there’s a practical way.