Live and Let’s Fly asks whether it’s fair that a slight woman of 100 pounds get charged an excess baggage fee for going over the weight limit on her checked luggage with a 51 pound suitcase, but a 300 pound woman checking a 50-pound bag isn’t charged for any excess?
Certainly a passenger’s weight plus their bag’s weight is the total weight that passenger is causing to be carried on the plane and flown from one place to another. There’s a maximum weight a plane can support (which can also limit how much cargo the airline can carry). And total weight influences fuel burn and therefore an airline’s costs. Shouldn’t larger passengers pay more – an overweight bag fee for the customer, not just the bag?
Airlines set checked bag weight limits and charge fees for bags that exceed those limits. Even when bags flew free at Southwest Airlines, I found Southwest to be the most unforgiving with overweightbag fees. Those fees are both about revenue, but also about managing cost and complexity.
- Aircraft have certified maximum takeoff weight and weight distribution matters for balance and safety. Baggage weight is part of the load calculation, and overweight bags can affect balance planning (and so adjustments elsewhere).
- The fees discourage passengers from bringing heavier bags that slow down handling and strain equipment, requiring greater ramp cost and risk.
- Rather than prorating extra weight, airlines generally set a hard threshold (e.g., 50 lbs) to keep enforcement quick at check-in, encourages travelers to buy up to higher baggage allowances in advance, and generate revenue that’s disproportionately higher than the actual incremental cost of carrying the extra weight.
The thing is, though, that the reasons why heavier bags are costly and complicated for airlienes do also apply to people!
- Weight and balance matters in the cabin. We see that a lot with turboprops and regional jets, but I’ve even seen it with widebody aircraft.
- Planes have maximum takeoff weight as well, and that includes passenger weight.
- Heavier passengers burn more fuel and entail greater wear and tear on seats.
Yet we don’t really see airlines charging passengers by the pound, or imposing overweight passenger fees!
Of course, the Air Carrier Access Act prohibits discrimination against passengers with disabilities. If weight is linked to a medical condition (e.g., obesity tied to a disability), charging more could be viewed as discriminatory unless the airline can show it’s a legitimate safety or operational necessity.
Even without a medical disability, a weight-based policy could disproportionately affect certain demographic groups, potentially opening the door to claims under civil rights laws.
The discrimination claim is almost de rigueur. “Big Curvy Olivia” thinks it is discrimination that aircraft aisles are so narrow, and posts video of herself struggling to get through a United Airlines Polaris business class cabin. But widened aisles would mean even less room for seats!
Lol and the First Class cabin has much more space than economy pic.twitter.com/YCAh501hF3
— Ben Kew 🏌️♂️ (@ben_kew) May 18, 2023
Indeed, some ‘plus-sized influencers’ think that airlines should just give them extra space for free, the way that Southwest has done, but that means amortizing the cost of a flight across fewer passengers and a need to generate higher revenue from each one. That’s just another form of cost-shifting – higher fares- albeit less directly than a single passenger stealing space from the passenger next to them because they don’t fit.
And it would certainly create complexity for international flying – while weight-based pricing has been permitted in Samoa, anti-discrimination laws in the EU are going to be far more problematic. And ‘pay by the pound’ would make an airline a political target and the butt of every late night comic’s jokes. So the policy, it turns out, is actually tailor-made for adoption by Spirit Airlines.
She is an idiot
The bag limit is not for the fuel burn but in order to protect the bag loaders, they dont have to carry her or him in the plane
She is just a moron, albeit a skinny one
It’s an inevitability: Your BMI is your ticket price — the next dimension in airline pricing.
Give the airlines time, and they will implement it. The economics are quite compelling.
https://brothke.medium.com/your-bmi-is-your-ticket-price-the-next-dimension-in-airline-pricing-c0592c755a8f?sk=6d63de598dbaa96540b9f3fc9255e571
There are (or at least used to be) special handling protocols for oversize bagsfor ground handlers. Might be a two-person lift, so is disruptive. So the fee could be to discourage overweight bags. I’ve had up to 52lb accepted (ex who refused to pack with regards to weight). It was not fun slinging those bags around onto rental car shuttles, taxis, etc.
Losing weight is apparently some form of human suffering. Can’t have that.
@Doug: Only losers call well-dressed and likely highly-intelligent people an idiot and a moron. This appears to be a case of self-projection for sure.
@texas tj
Coming from someone in texas discussing intelligence seems like an oxymoron…
Anyway, to your point, some of the biggest idiots I met ver really REALLY well dressed, I did not know there is a connection
Do you have any constructive thing to say to my point or do you come here just to vent?
Doug is right. I blew out three disks when the orange overweight tag wasn’t on a bag. It wasn’t fun. I didn’t have to haul someone’s fat rear onto the plane, but I did have to load overweight and oversize bags. If an obese passenger need to be transferred from a wheelchair to a seat, we always used two people. That was hard enough, but they were truly disabled.
No one needs bags over 50 lbs. What the hell are you packing, anyway? Unless your tools of your trade can’t be broken into smaller batches (think military equipment), you can split the load into two bags.
Ah, recycling Matthew Klint’s content. Interestingly, I noticed recently that some of our resident bigots, like @Walter Barry and @Andy S, are alive and well over there, practically shouting pro-Putin propaganda. Traitors.
@Doug — @TexasTJ is right; you didn’t need to call anyone silly names to make your point. Also, there are ample intelligent, decent people in Texas, and also California, Illinois, and New York; this isn’t about where we live.
(And, if you think ‘bigot’ or ‘traitor’ is silly, no, it’s accurate for those two.)
One can split to two bags, but many people then have to pay for a 2nd bag.
Personally, I’d rather handle one 60-lb bag than two smaller bags. They have wheels so the extra weight doesn’t matter much, but having to commit two hands to hauling 2 bags (or awkwardly tie them to each other) does.
I always thought the weight restrictions were to protect the baggage handlers, not out of any concern for load in the cargo hold.
I would loooooove to see a change dot org petition to Uncle Sam for a skinny people airline passenger discount. The fuel savings are real, albeit minor.
Quick math, for a ~2 hour flight (let’s use that as a yardstick since it’s pretty common), to save a gallon of jet fuel the plane needs to weigh about a hundred pounds less. The airlines pay a bulk rate of about a few bucks per gallon. In other words, a skinny passenger who’s about 30-50lbs less than the nominal average passenger weight *might* save the airline a dollar of fuel at the most. Still, I would love to see such a line item when you buy a ticket (like the TSA/security fee, etc.). The angst it would cause some folks in the not-skinny crowd would be hilarious to me!
@JimC2 — Not to be too cynical, but, Change dot org, really, in 2025… “really, Diane??”
Many types of oversize cargo can only be shipped via ground.
Why would BMI be used rather than weight? Didn’t follow the link.
“Only losers call well-dressed and likely highly-intelligent people an idiot and a moron.” Only losers make stupid comments like how you are dressed determines whether you’re an idiot or not.
@This comes to mind — No, only losers call other people who call losers, losers… (keep it going!)
What is the biggest (pun intended) reason why we should NEVER charge overweight passengers a per-pound fee?
When it comes time for the weigh-in at the gate, half of them will strip to their underwear to save a few bucks.
No thank you!
@1990. If I’m a loser who calls losers calling other losers losers, does that make me a losing loser, in which case I’m a winner?
@Thing 1 — What do clothes even weigh, like, 1-2 pounds at most? What they should do instead of weighing is use an equivalent ‘box’ like for the carry-on size, but for the ‘passenger’ size… squeeze!
Nostalgia for the pre-civil-rights days of weight requirements for stewardesses. The hat rack for ladies’ hats. Complimentary checked luggage in the luggage hold.
Future implementation of weight requirements for passengers identifying as women or not, may be required for passengers to pay their fair share into the enhanced-revenue-system.
@BigTee — Huh. I’ve noticed some of you really do have “Nostalgia for the pre-civil-rights days” generally. That’s not a compliment. Tell us how you really feel. Go hard ‘r’ if you feel wish.
@1990 “What they should do instead of weighing is use an equivalent ‘box’ like for the carry-on size, but for the ‘passenger’ size… squeeze!”
And we’ve all seen the videos where someone’s carry on gets stuck in the box. Watching that show would definitely be worth the price of a ticket.
300lb+ passengers should have to purchase 2 seats. I would be very upset if I had to be crunched in my seat because someone who is huge is spilling over into my space.
With that said, I believe the airlines do am estimate of pax weight. Example 150 pax at 250lbs each — that would cover a 100lb person and a 350 or even 400 person (divide by 2). The airlines certainly can’t weigh each passenger but they can make an estimated weight of the pax load.
When will airlines start removing rows and give us comfort and leg room again? Oh, how I miss the days of the 747s!!!!!!!!
This is about OSHA. Over 50 pounds, you need two people lifting.