The whole obese-people-are-driving-the-airlines-out-of-buisness thing is ridiculous. Let’s run through the numbers. Filled with passengers, luggage, and fuel, a Boeing 747-8I weighs 970,000 pounds. It’s empty weight is 410,000 pounds. Add on the 64,225 gallons of fuel it requires (at 8.34 pounds per gallon that’s about 535637 pounds) and you have an airliner that weighs 945637 pounds already that’s 97.5% of it’s total weight, without the added fatties. Take away luggage and all average weight passengers and the obese only account for a tiny variance (0.01% according to the FAA) in total weight. So if we are to scale it according to the averages (an average weight person pays the standard fee, an obese person pays the extra fuel required to ship their ass to Detroit or wherever they’re going divided by the total number of pounds of all passengers multiplied by their weight) comes out to be, even for a 500 pound person, less than a dollar.

Even summing that over every flight, it doesn’t even come close to bailing out the airlines catastrophic losses. Let’s think things through people.

Commercial airlines are scrambling to increase fees to stay afloat against the skyrocketing costs of jet fuel and the extra weight of the American public. A CDC website shows 34% of Americans are obese now.

This idea in Derrie-Air’s fictional ad is based on fairness. This argument should be acceptable solely because it IS fair.

1. Sin or Lifestyle Taxes
2. Charges based on usage.

Following, I think we see in the replies a general dislike of targeted sin/lifestyle taxes but some disagreement about the charges.

I like several who replied here am not a small person. At over 250lbs I would not be offended to pay more than my wife (~120lbs) to fly from point a to point b. No matter how you cut it the carrier has to spend more to move me. However it would offend me if my wife and or my children didn’t pay less than average in the same situation.

So lifestyle taxes bleh but fair usage charges and the %based taxes that go with them are within the realm of reason.

Urb

PS: Yeah, when riding, I always wear a helmet, jacket, gloves, and boots — AND a reflective vest. None of which is required, here in Rhode Island. I don’t need a nanny state telling me how to be safe — nor do I need one telling me how to eat healthy!

I agree taxing luggage, but there’s no way you can ethically charge somebody more for their body type. A great deal of size is genetics, and there’s no way you can ethically tax somebody for an accident of birth. Besides, how in hell are you going to enforce something like that? Weigh-in before take off? That will make already congested airports many times worse. Doctors information? Against privilege, and not everyone has a doctor. You see we’re I’m going.

In the western world, the market has a great of power, and often creates culture as much as it arises from it. Charging more for certain lifestyle choices is discrimination that will cause dissent in their practitioners, and if such taxes are too much and to difficult to avoid, even effectively outlawing it. This is not something a free society would do. This mean people are equal under law, except where money’s involved. Ridiculous.

If you’re paying for more or less of a service, like shipping something heavy, or surfing more internet, sure, base it on use. But this is not the same as lifestyle choices like smoking, drinking alcohol, eating certain foods or being heavier-than-doctors-say-you-should be. These latter things in general are choices adults make for ourselves, and were we actually free, they wouldn’t be looked down upon and taxed heavily in some cases.