`WALK OF SHAME' - Obese flyer booted from flight in US

originally posted by: peck420
Not to sound stupid or anything, but shouldn't matters like these be addressed at time of purchase, or at least at ticket check?

Why is it always addressed after the customer is already on the plane?

I certainly agree that was a fail. The chap could have been discretely spoken to at check-in.
The walk off the plane should and could have been avoided.

originally posted by: grainofsand

originally posted by: bigfatfurrytexan
Sorry. 1 person, 1 ticket. Period. End of story.

For you maybe, but last flight I took and had to pay extra for a few more kilo's of hand luggage I was angry that the fat guy next to me weighed more than me and my luggage yet paid less for the flight.
That's the effing disgrace.

If you are not fond of it, then perhaps the ticket should be sold b the pound. Then everyone is paying for each and every ounce, and there is no one being humiliated.

I mean, for me its a non issue. I stopped flying the day the TSA started groping. And won't fly until they stop.

if we had the same size seat in a car that are on airlines, would that particular car sell?.....I would guess, HELL NO!!...why do we put up with this crap. the worse part of any trip I take now, is the actual flying part. if it's all possible and affordable to take a car or a train, I do.

originally posted by: TommyD1966

originally posted by: bigfatfurrytexan
a reply to: OrionHunterX

Sorry. 1 person, 1 ticket. Period. End of story.

UA (and other airlines) developed the standard for how seats are designed and layed out. There is a lot of money to be made in making seats slightly smaller, forcing anyone over a size 2 to buy a second ticket. Their argument is a display of conflict of interest.

And, if im being really honest....the airlines have been bailed out with my tax dollars more times than I can count. So eff them. Hard.

I may have been arrested were I that man. I would have went full berserker mode. Oh my god.....now i need to go take a walk.

That makes no sense. If a person cannot physically fit into a single seat (with armrests down) they need to buy two tickets. This of course is assuming the person knows they won't fit. IF the flight isn't full, most airlines will make an attempt to accommodate. However on a full flight - nope.

First thing I do when I board is put the armrests down between my seat and the one next to me. If a seatmate asks if they can raise it I tell them no.

Yes, airlines maybe should be 'nicer' - but a large person doesn't have the right to impinge on the rights of others.

What makes no sense is why this business model came up out of nowhere. Just today.


As a man who weighed considerably more than I do now, I can assure you: for the entire span of time before the TSA started the Grope and Rope, if the seatbelts didn't fit, you could get an extender to make them fit. I have hung over into a few seats in my younger days....and never ever once was there anything said or done about it.
Now, out of nowhere, we have all just decided that fat people should pay twice. LOL, and that makes sense.

oO

Maybe tomorrow we can arbitrarily decide that people with black hair are responsible for global warming and make them shave their heads.

So apparently fat is the new gay? That's what I'm garnering from this conversation.

They were just born that way? Are we going to have anti-discrimination laws against fat people now?

This is disgusting. Some of you people are dead-set on normalizing aberrant and unhealthy behavior, for what reason I'll never understand.

Being fat is unhealthy and unacceptable. The 1% who have a medical reason, whatever. That sucks, but we all have challenges in life.

Deal with it, you big fat snowflake, you.

originally posted by: bigfatfurrytexan
Airlines have been bailed out by taxpayers. In my estimation, this creates a social contract.

That may be how you feel but feelings don't come into business. Profit and contracts is all it is.
If you wish for this imagined social contract then I guess all you can do is campaign for your government to formally write and enforce such contract.
Otherwise, well, you know...I would ram as many people into my planes as I could...and I would continue to do so as long as the market allowed such a business model to profit.

What's really funny is how I was about 50 pounds over weight many years ago. I worked hard to loose that weight, watched what I ate, made sure I was getting a lot more exercise, since my job basically had me sitting down for 8 hours a day, and i did it. Dropped that weight!

2 months later I was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes.

This meant I had to be even more careful about what I consume, and to keep up the exercise.

Been doing that for years, and yet....the weight came back, and even exceeded it.

I'm very careful of what I eat and how much. I have to be or my blood sugar goes crazy. I spend a lot of time outside on my land working my rear end off, and even take 30 minute walks each day.

And yet the weight stays.

My doctor's answer? A big shrug and "that's what happens to some diabetics."

Too many of you in this thread would point at me and think: Bet that fatty stuffs his face with all sorts of junk food and just can't put down the fork!

And you would be completely and totally wrong. I'm only allowed 60g of carbs per meal, and sometimes I forego even that amount. Dangerous because my meds will cause me to crash (and that is never fun. You get the shakes, hot flashes, can't get your breath and your heart starts pounding like you've just ran 20 miles).

I've had to stay goodbye to a lot of foods made with bleached flour (breads, pastas) and high starch foods (potatoes), as they turn to sugars quickly in your body.

I can't remember the last time I had a cookie, a slice of cake, a slice of pie, ice cream......

McDonalds? Burger King? Pizza Hut? HA! I avoid those places completely. As a mater of fact, we rarely eat out because I don't know how many carbs I might be getting. When we do go out, it's a small salad for me, with water.

I'm outside all the time cutting down trees, mending fences, splitting wood, clearing land, shoveling dirt....every day.

And yet, the weight stays.

Too many of you in this thread have no idea, make really bad assumptions, and I hope you never have to walk in my shoes. Because if you do, you'll have people like you looking at you and thinking the things you all have said here, knowing that they are not true.

originally posted by: Kandinsky
a reply to: thesaneone


Airlines have done their sums and averaged out the smallest seats and maxxed out their capacity to get more passengers. They've been considering designs for standing only planes to get even more bodies on board.

Just a few days ago, I saw a bit on the news about airline seats getting smaller, and people wanting federal regulation for a universal size. But no go. So I looked it up and although the news item is older, it is still pertinent. In this day and age where people in general are larger, the seats shouldn't be shrinking. Because there ARE a lot larger people today and the discomfort of a small seat is.......uncomfortable. And I'm not even talking obese. What a lot of people seem to be missing here is the "walk of shame". A heavy handedness police style escort exit walk would be highly embarrassing.

Your airplane seat is going to keep shrinking

Consumer groups are fighting to get airlines to stop shrinking seats, but federal regulators still won’t act.

It’s not your imagination: Economy class seats on airplanes are shrinking.

The average seat pitch, a rough measure of legroom, has dropped from 35 inches before airline deregulation in the 1970s to about 31 inches today. The average width of an airline seat has shriveled from 18 inches to about 16 ½.

Meanwhile, the airline industry is enjoying record profits—some would argue as a result of cramming more seats on their planes.

But now consumer advocates want the shrinkage to stop. Passenger representatives on a key advisory committee are pushing the U.S. government to take strong regulatory action on the issue. And FlyersRights, an airline passenger advocacy group, just asked federal regulators to mandate a minimum seat width and pitch for commercial airlines. The group also delivered a petition with 30,000 signatures asking the government to take action.
fortune.com...

originally posted by: NthOther
So apparently fat is the new gay? That's what I'm garnering from this conversation.

They were just born that way? Are we going to have anti-discrimination laws against fat people now?

This is disgusting. Some of you people are dead-set on normalizing aberrant and unhealthy behavior, for what reason I'll never understand.

Being fat is unhealthy and unacceptable. The 1% who have a medical reason, whatever. That sucks, but we all have challenges in life.

Deal with it, you big fat snowflake, you.

You, you're right. Not all humans deserve common/standard respect. We can just arbitrarily pick out segments of society to harass, and thats ok.

The segment du jour: fat people. Heaven help you if you crack a gay joke....but poke the porkies all ya want. They aren't really people, and don't really have feelings. So walks of shame really don't matter, and might shame them into shaping up. Because the lifetime of ridicule they have had obviously ain't doing the trick.



Ya know, ATS....I really thought we were better than this. I really thought we all got it: humans should be treated with respect. ALL HUMANS. Apparently we still have a ways to go.

But im still hopeful.

I write this with understand it will probably be deleted.

But after reading the comments in the OP and then the rest that ensued, (well I skipped the last couple of pages), I proclaim this is a troll thread, with a lot of trolls.

originally posted by: eriktheawful
Too many of you in this thread have no idea, make really bad assumptions, and I hope you never have to walk in my shoes.

Nobody has been speaking about you in this thread, you clearly are a medical exception, but the overwhelming majority of fat people are not.

My comment is:
1. A second seat is obviously the solution
2. It should be free, your ticket is not for 'space' it's attendance, people switch seats all the time and I've personally been moved to First Class free of charge
3. The airlines have NO PROBLEM 'overselling' and "your seat" that "you paid for" is easily as likely to be sold to two people. You are guaranteed nothing. I can't even begin to describe how stupid this is if you're a person that needs two seats.
4. The airline chose to discriminate against this man because he is fat, and so to profit his attendance was denied over smaller people that can fit into two seats.
5. Was his seat unused through the flight? If yes the airline lost money and defies their own logic of not allowing the 'uncomfortable' passenger flight to be free, and if the answer is NO its unacceptable discrimination based solely on profit.
6. Size must be included at the point of purchase for UA not not get off the hook IMO. Nothing is spelled out. 175lbs is a meaningless description. It just states "if you can fit" and I'll bet the farm he was able to sit down. If you cannot fit into the row is one thing, the extent that you 'fit' is another.
7. EVERY ONE OF THESE is assuming the flight was completely FULL. If not, F### American Airlines for not being able to ask 2 people to move for 1.


Ps. I weigh 111 pounds and am rather small and would be happy to have reduced flight cost if me being small is an aide to those being big. Just like the passenger who 'complained' I'm sure had no intention of EJECTING the fat man from the flight to save a quick buck, in short it was his wallet, not himself that was 'uncomfortable'. I'd put my own weight on the ticket alone for free if it just meant this didn't happen as often.

originally posted by: grainofsand

originally posted by: bigfatfurrytexan
Airlines have been bailed out by taxpayers. In my estimation, this creates a social contract.

That may be how you feel but feelings don't come into business. Profit and contracts is all it is.
If you wish for this imagined social contract then I guess all you can do is campaign for your government to formally write and enforce such contract.
Otherwise, well, you know...I would ram as many people into my planes as I could...and I would continue to do so as long as the market allowed such a business model to profit.

Yeah, you're right. We should just let our corporate overlords treat us like cattle. We aren't actually flying across country....we are being shipped. Its not a "passenger cabin" . Its a "human cargo container".

I really like the idea of being treated like freight better, though. That way we can go from "1 person, 1 ticket" to "pay by the pound". I wonder if we can get them to just tattoo the stamps on our forehead, so the airlines don't have to keep paying for stamps? Would that get me a frequent flyer discount?

Probably not....freight doesn't get discounts.

originally posted by: grainofsand

originally posted by: OrionHunterX
Really? So you throw a guy out from the plane? Why wasn't he informed before boarding the flight? This is outrageous!

Well, yeah, if he is so fat he's spreading his muffin-tops into the next seat.
175Kg is ridiculously huge, he probably couldn't fit in the chair at his local barber shop, should we whine and petition the barber shop to buy bigger chairs now?!

Private businesses set their own size limits and so they should, it is up to the market to decide if that business model lives or dies.
How about theme park rides, should they make bigger safety harnesses and seats? Should a fat person have a right to feel offended when they have to get off a ride because they can't fit in it?! Absolutely ridiculous.

The overwhelming majority of fat people are fat because they take in more energy than they burn. It is as simple as that.
I eat crap processed corn-syrup/fatty/sugar foods a lot, I drink alcohol a lot, I am not fat because I use the same or more energy than I eat/drink.
No fat people in sustained famine conditions, and strange that there are no 'big boned' people to be seen in sustained famine conditions.

I see the bleating that it is an addiction, and psychological illness, well maybe for some, but I see that as just looking to be a victim. Don't eat so much, and do more.

In 80's Britain, fat people were rare, and stuck out like sore thumbs, yet now they are becoming the norm, and want to be victims with special needs. It's like they claim there has been a curious increase in psychological tendency to want to fill our faces with food as a society.
I say bull#, and while I have sympathy for anyone who is trying to control their weight, it is all your own fault in the vast majority of cases so my sympathy only goes so far.

When my son was early teens he started getting fat and I was as blunt with him. It was his mothers fault giving him sweets and cakes etc, but when he stayed in my home he had 3 square meals and that was it. Yes there were tears when I refused, and told him that was the reason for being fat, he got used to it, we discussed weight issues deeply and he's now an athletic healthy rugby playing young adult who regularly says thank you to me for my intervention.

Every fat kid is the parents fault in my opinion, but I guess that's for another thread...

I hear you about the 80's. Being fat was rare. I recently returned to my home state after most of 5 years in Asia, where obesity is more rare. I was shocked at how many were very overweight. I later looked it up and 38% in that state qualified as obese.

I do agree that some % of that is due to some physical reason, like thyroid or hormonal issues, but there is no way most of those people have a physical condition.

I do need to clarify my previous post in which I said flab. Some people posted their concern about the way some people were talking bad about obese people. I dont know if my post was included. I dont know what other word to use than flab. Also...in my scenario, it would be a major discomfort for me on a 16 hour flight and that is just the truth.

On the flip side, I have been crammed on Chinese subways and buses so full that I literally couldnt move and that really sucked, did not matter if there were skinny or obese people around me. Not having personal space is a very big annoyance.

There was this one time on a subway that was filled tighter than sardines and there was a beautiful girl in front of me. Well...nah...that is for a different thread

It's still discrimination.

Being fat doesn't mean you want to be. It's not a choice.

My diet: Domino's, Burger King, McDonalds, KFC, Taco Bell, Dairy Queen

The ONLY homemade meal I eat is Pasta because my roommate is Italian.

Do I exercise? No. The majority of "exercise" is at best pacing while I think sometimes because it's notably long. I even have muscular deficiency.

Do I over eat? Yes. I eat 5 times a day.

I weigh 111lbs, because my metabolism is a freak of nature simple as that, and anyone that can't comprehend the opposite is possible and that you can do nothing but eat salad and jog, and still be fat, is a moron.

Ps. Having a high metabolism is as bad as being fat. They BOTH cause heartattacks. The Japanese invented a "wonder drug" years ago that raised people's metabolism and they ALL got heart attacks years later in their 40's. No offence to my consumer mom who took Metabolife all the time, but that's probably why I have heart problems now I'm my 20's.

originally posted by: imjack
175lbs is a meaningless description.

The person in the Original Post was not 175lbs, he was 175kg which is 385lbs.

a reply to: OrionHunterX

What is it with these people, surely by now they know that sometimes you dont get what you want in life. There's obviously no empty seats left. And so he cries about it. Has this passenger never flown before?

Maybe he should lose a few kilos. It is a 5 hr flight; has he thought how rough it would be for his neighour?

If you take up more than one space on an airline flight, then I'm sorry but you should be worrying about a lot more than just your flight.

I'd be afraid of my heart stopping mid-flight due to stress. Your heart should NEVER be put under that much weight. Ever. I don't get how people let themselves get that fat - out of sheer laziness.

originally posted by: bigfatfurrytexan
Yeah, you're right. We should just let our corporate overlords treat us like cattle. We aren't actually flying across country....we are being shipped. Its not a "passenger cabin" . Its a "human cargo container".

I really like the idea of being treated like freight better, though. That way we can go from "1 person, 1 ticket" to "pay by the pound". I wonder if we can get them to just tattoo the stamps on our forehead, so the airlines don't have to keep paying for stamps? Would that get me a frequent flyer discount?

Probably not....freight doesn't get discounts.

Ever travelled 3rd class in Asia?
Meh, first world problems that fat people demand bigger seats.

I agree with your earlier post regarding pay by kilo and volume for everyone, not just luggage.
It is odd that I pay extra for a few kilo's of hand luggage when a fat person weighing more than me and my luggage pays less for the same flight.

originally posted by: grainofsand
Nobody has been speaking about you in this thread, you clearly are a medical exception, but the overwhelming majority of fat people are not.

How do you know? How do you know this man wasn't overweight for a medical reason?