h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

You book one seat per body. You get an allowance per seat.

Here's an interesting point to consider: if you don't make full use of your allowance, the airline could sell the balance for you to passengers who are over theirs.

Consider: petite passenger turns up with hand luggage only, total weight 80kg. They have a spare allowance of 20kg.

Behind them in the queue is a salad-dodger with a side of ham in their suitcase, total weight 120kg. Now, if these two were together on the same booking, they're good to go, because they've got two bodies and 200kg.

But if the petite one is traveling alone, they could sell their spare allowance to the gutbucket. The airline would likely take a cut, but it would incentivise everyone to cut down on weight because they could get something back. Luggage overpayments could be distributed pro-rata according to how UNDER the weight you are. So someone who sneaks in at 99kg doesn't get anything back until all the people with less total weight than them have been compensated.

So everyone whose party was overweight for their number of bodies would pay up, but the people who managed to get in underweight might find themselves receiving a nice little bonus rebate. I can imagine it being given them at the boarding gate - as the lackeys swipe your boarding card, you're issued with a little card that entitled you to £x.xx to spend on drinks and snacks on the plane. The more lardarses on the plane, the more money the healthy people get to spend on aftershave etc.

"I fully support the idea of there being a total weight allowance per passenger of, say, 100kg. If you weigh 80kg, that means you get 20kg luggage."[Hoovoolo]

That's exactly how much luggage I would get, since I do weigh 80 kg.

"Obviously, if you repulsively, disgustingly obese, you'll be paying extra every time you fly even if you take no bags, but that will either (a) disincentivise you from flying, which will make everyone else's day nicer and more comfortable, or (b) incentivise you to lay off the pies. I'm seeing no downsides to this plan"

Most of the people in this category already pay more for food [because they eat a lot of it] and gas [because their cars get worse gas mileage due to carrying so much extra weight]. It's fair that they should also pay more when they fly. The thing is, though, that it's the total weight of the airplane that counts. If you have 60 underweight passengers and one very overweight one, the average will probably come out all right. For years, this has probably been the case with the vast majority of flights, otherwise the airlines would have done something about it much sooner [assuming that airline CEOs have much intelligence, which, alas, is open to debate].

By the standards of Okkham's Razor, the best solution has been the simplest all these years: it all averages out, so don't change anything. Now that passengers have, on average, become so much heavier than they used to be, a suitably simple solution is now required. Is there a simpler good solution than charging overweight passengers more? How about requiring passengers to pass through one of two gates when they arrive at the ticket booths? One gate will accommodate passengers of acceptable girths. The other will be much wider. There would be scales in front of the ticket desk. The person selling or handing out the tickets would note which gate the passenger came through, and activate the scales for only the customers who came through the wider gate. Thus, passengers who weigh a lot because they are very tall or have brawny chests and shoulders would still be slim enough in the waist to pass through the normal gate.

For what it's worth, the width of seats in theaters and arenas and airplanes had been 18 inches for about sixty years [from the early 1940s to the early 2000s]. They had to be widened in new ones starting about ten years ago.

Yes, it's the total weight of the plane - which is why, if you're environmentally responsible and don't ask the airline to carry over 100kg, you should get a little payback, and if you're irresponsible, you should pay more.

Whether you're carrying that weight in the hold, in the overhead locker or in your seat should be irrelevant, so as to head off any possible breathless, sweaty objections from people who'd be paying an excess even if their luggage consisted only of a handkerchief to mop their brows.

If it is about the weight of the plane and where it is being carried is irrelevant

why can't we have two seats

please explain slowly without caling me an idiot

The weight the plane can carry is a floating point variable.

The number of seats on the plane is a fixed integer.

Does this answer your question?

No,

I get why the number of seats are fixed tho

just not the price of them

"I quite like the idea of going on holiday carrying hardly anything and then buying my clothes when I get there. I might do that anyway, next time..."

I get triply done over here. First I have to pay loads because I'm a monstrous individual. Secondly I have to pay for extra legroom because see point one. Thirdly I have to spend the holiday in ill-fitting shorts, because if there's only one shop in Manchester that sells jeans in my size, I don't hold out much hope for finding any in the back of beyond.

All in all, despite his sensible arguments, I'm glad Hoo isn't running the airlines. Because I'd have to take a bloody boat.

>Thus, passengers who weigh a lot because they are very tall or have brawny chests and shoulders would still be slim enough in the waist to pass through the normal gate. <

My chest/shoulders are wider than my waist. Is this not true of all blokes - possibly not women - who are not overweight?

Certainly I currently wear a 36 inch waist trousers and 46/48 inch chest.

I've lost 25kilos in weight in the last 9 months and I don't think I'm any thinner in the shoulders.

You'd maybe have fared better nine months ago to walk sideways through your detector

"I've lost 25kilos in weight in the last 9 months "

Can I be the first in the thread to say "congratulations", on the assumption you did it on purpose...?

>>..entirely uninterested in how that weight is distributed
between the cabin and the hold, and why would they be? <<

Ask anyone who ever tried to do a barrel roll in a P-51 before
they'd burned off the auxilliary fuel load carried in a tank
behind the pilots' seat. Oh wait, you can't do that, they all
died horribly.


~jwf~

a) There's the excess weight in itself of the big tubby people to contend with (as well as the big boned type etc)

Because of that extra weight the plane has to carry more fuel

b) That extra fuel also adds to the weight of the plane

Hence extra fuel needs to be carried to carry the extra fuel of (b) needed to carry the excess tubbiness

c) Now that extra fuel needed to carry the extra fuel from (b) also adds to the weight of the plane

I think you can see where I am going with this ...

>>"I've lost 25kilos in weight in the last 9 months "

Can I be the first in the thread to say "congratulations", on the assumption you did it on purpose...?<<

Well it was on purpose, but you're not the first sadly - oddly enough people who know and see me on a daily basis have kind of noticed - although it took a while
You can see how I did it from my journal here- I do rather a lot of cycling these days

But, yeah, thanks anyway

As a (still) burly big boned type can I say that I accept that I may pay a little more for flying*.

As recompense however, I intend to reserve the right to charge a fee for fetching things off high shelves, opening jam jars and humping around heavy things for those who are challenged in the height/strength department.







*Although my target is to get below 100 kg soon

Orcus, add in total legal immunity if I punch anyone saying "Ooh, you're tall" and we have a deal.

As long as a I can get away with that sitting in the cinema seat in front of me joke, which I'm sure you've never heard before...

I believe you could probably charge more for the shelf-fetching service than I mind.

>> my target is to get below 100 kg <<



Over the years I have observed several hootooists
mentioning their considerable weight loss.

Remember "Fat Kelli"? She lost a ton of weight and
then got married and had babies.

And 2legs? In spite of his constant referencing to his
cheese and bacon and duck egg omelettes he claims
to have lost several stone in the past few years.

And I myself have shrunk from nearly 300 pounds when
I first joined to very healthy 220 over the past decade.

There are many others. A surprising number. And likely
even many more who have not shared their story. Who'da
thunk that sitting on your arse in front of a computer
screen could burn off the lard!

In conclusion I have to suggest that h2g2 has a hidden
side effect of weight loss we can all be very proud of.
It just doesn't make any kind of obvious sense, but there
it is, the h2g2 diet miracle!


~jwf~

All tubbies should be strapped to the top of the plane.

As demonstrated by Albert Einstein, their additional mass, will cause a distortion of the spacetime continuum, creating an upward gravitational force that will help lift the aircraft into the air.

will they also do snacks

A87788830

Oddly enough jwf - I seem to be late...


... maybe I'm expecting...!!!!!