I think this is an important subject. It's difficult to address because of the severity of prejudice regarding obesity in today's world but it's going to have to be addressed at some point.
I used to travel a great deal for business (I was ordinary sized). I dreaded sitting next to someone huge. Oddly, I didn't mind "fat people" so much as I minded "muscular people" because the fat people were just squishy--not super comfortable but not miserable for me unless they were truly huge--while the muscular people were very UNcomfortable to be squished up against. I'd take a woman with a big butt long before a man with broad shoulders, given a choice.
Then for a couple years I worked long hours at a different job, commuted 4-5 hours a day on the worst highway in L.A., went to school at night, and ate just once a day, mega carbs at del taco before falling into bed at 1-2am and getting up at 6 to start it again. I was stressed out, sleep deprived, almost totally sedentary, and despite only eating once a day, apparently flipped some insulin trigger switch in myself, since two years later I was over 200 lbs heavier.
(A fascinating sociology experiment in how people's reactions to you change depending on what you look like, but one that would have been more fun had the subject not been me.)
The next time I had to fly I was aghast at how horrible it was. Fortunately the flight had empty seats so I asked the FA if I could sit somewhere that I wouldn't make the person next to me miserable and she agreed. For my next several business trips (this was probably 15 years ago) I went to the ticket counter ahead, explained my dilemma to the clerk, asked if there was some way to be assigned next to an empty seat, and explained that my request was on behalf of the poor soul next to me, not myself. They were always very willing. I had a couple of personal trips and I flew first class. The seats were still too small--but not misery-level.
For awhile I didn't travel and into the news came the stories of some airlines asking passengers to buy a second ticket. Although it turned out this was not an officially implemented, consistent standard for all airlines, I actually thought it had been made so.
So I mostly quit flying, because I could not afford to pay $1500 for a round trip ticket everyone else pays $750 for.
However, I sometimes have still had to fly. I buy two tickets for adjoining seats in advance, I minimize my luggage, I make a point to not eat or drink so I don't need the restroom, and in general I don't think I have inconvenienced anybody else.
Last year my corporate office required we all fly in for a meeting and of course the company paid. Except it cost me nearly $800 because of course they would only pay for one ticket (I asked). Risking losing my job because my butt was too big (when reducing this is a vastly more metabolically complicated process than thin people with zero proper education on the subject imagine) was really pretty upsetting. I was later offered another job in my company by a manager who liked my work, that I had to turn down, because it requires air travel.
Now, there are three points that I think are relevant from the perspective of an oversized passenger and that would help the airlines themselves to consider, that I seldom see addressed in conversations like these.
1. I am more than willing -- in fact I find this logical and reasonable -- to pay more money for more seat space. Space and weight are limited on airplanes so it makes perfect sense that passengers pay for what they are using. Just like I pay more for quality products than other people do for cheaper ones, it's a quality-of-life issue, and if I had the money, I'd pay for a larger space even were I *not* oversized. The problems with my simply doing this are these:
A. I buy two plane tickets. The seats curve up at the sides slightly with a hard edge. Not all the arms go fully 'behind' the level of the chairs. This depends on the airline and the airplane; you'd have to weigh a lot and be wide and try each out to understand, as it was not obvious to me visually until I actually sat in them for awhile. While sitting in my two seats, with my high weight, the pressure of the place where the seats adjoin in my bottom and in my back and the funky way I try to sit to mitigate the pain--yes, actual *physical pain* that gets worse with each passing minute--torques my back and results, after about 3-4 hours, in my being darn near crippled; I can barely walk to get out of the plane by the time I stand up, and my back hurts enough to need actual medication. This kind of seating would be horrible for a 120lbs person; imagine what it's like for someone 2,3,4 times that size-- unimaginable at the larger end of the scale.
Now I am not complaining that I had to buy two seats, but I certainly AM complaining that I paid $800 for a $400 travel route and was as a result put in pain, miserable and half-crippled by it. If I am going to pay literally TWICE the amount of everybody else, I should damn well at least expect to be able to sit there for 4 hours without physical injury. The airline may be providing me what they consider twice the space, but they are *not* providing me what *I* consider "twice the value". It's the equivalent of someone telling a tall male passenger, "Ok, we'll charge you 2x the amount but give you twice the leg room--oh, well, except in exchange for that, you have to scrunch over because the ceiling-height is where your shoulders are. You have no choice in this--if you want to fly, this is how it has to be."
B. I believe the entire "mental model" of how airplanes are set up seat-wise is unworkable for the world and the way things are going. It's old fashioned, for a world unlike what we live in now. It's not as financially smart (for the airline) as an alternative, either.
I can envision something slightly akin to church pews (but more comfortable) with a small opening in the back padding for seat belts and a skinny but firm 'divider' (full divider that went down into/below the seat level and up to arm level) about every 4" all the way across the plane. Passengers would basically buy "units". Children and skinny people might buy a 12 or 16" seat (3 or 4 units); larger people -- whether via muscle or fat -- might end up buying however many units were appropriate for their size.
The dividers would ensure that even were someone a bit too large, the person next to them would be far better insulated from the effect (at least at the seat level; not much you can do about shoulders. Well you *could* make optional the dividers to go all the way to the ceiling--just 'slide out' from a slot in each 4" spaced area-- but that might make some people claustrophic). I believe that airlines could probably make *more* money using this approach, fitting more people into the same amount of overall physical space. This would give every person the ability to buy what they needed, without it simply having to be one ticket or two, and this would appropriately charge people based on their actual required-space rather than on simply 1 vs 2 seats of space.
2. The other biggest problem is that there is no "scale" for this. The difference in cost today between coach vs. first class is staggering, and on most the flights I've had cause to consider, there is nothing in between. Now, while my avoiding flying altogether does protect thinner passengers from the horror of my size, it did not make the airline ANY money, and that's a real waste of potential for them, it is destructive to the overall industry, and it is more than inconvenient, in the modern world, for a big percentage of the population. While thin people rightfully complain they should not have to pay for larger-sized issues, on the other hand, basically over 50% of the population is at best highly uncomfortable in airline seats, and more all the time, and that's a huge chunk of the customer base. So, the fewer fat people who pay money to fly, the less profit the airline industry makes and in the end, the more tickets are going to cost for all as a result.
If the airlines had a seating system more like what I described above, people would not be faced with the choice of either being utterly miserable, or not flying because first class or two seats are way too expensive. For another 50 bucks, or 100 bucks, or whatever, they could upgrade another unit or 2 and be fine. It would create a sliding scale of cost for the consumer.
3. The last point is a legal and political issue. The travel industries in the USA (excepting for the most part trains) receive a lot of subsidy money from the US government. Basically, they "serve the national interest and all the people" and that is why. Now consider that growing obesity statistic, plus the issue of people who are simply large genetically or via muscle. We are talking about (now or soon) *more than half the population base* being unwilling or unable to fly--or to fly without actual physical risk of injury from anything from blood clots to back problems resulting from the space issues in the air--if I am a taxpayer, why is appropriate that the government give money to an industry as a "nationwide service" that in fact serves half the population, with a specific exclusion? You cannot even have your own private restaurant without having wheelchair access and a bathroom fit for the disabled in many states, and that's for a totally optional (not needed for practical or business reasons in the modern world), privately owned, small situation; so why should a nationally, federally-subsidized industry be able to enforce a situation that prevents bathrooms for probably 25%+ of the population due to size and that either puts in misery and physical danger or literally excludes-entirely via price half the population?
Perhaps feel the whole subsidy issue for airlines should be revisited with a hard eye to what is truly serving the national interests, and that if airlines are going to get all that money they should be expected to accomodate at least the same standards other businesses do. Now, if airlines were making a genuine effort to address this problem in some practical way -- like the alternative seating approach I mentioned -- it would not seem like that big an issue; clearly they understood, pricing and 'fitting' was on a sliding scale, etc. But the airlines just continue to provide seating and bathrooms that best fit teenage asians, for an entire nation(s) of people who only rarely fit that description, it physically endangers some people and it categorically excludes a growing larger % of the American public from even having access to that transportation.
So far, all the efforts to address this situation have come from two places:
1 - thin passengers in misery because of fat neighboring passengers; or
2 - fat or simply large-size passengers either in general misery, actual physical pain, or who are penalized *hugely* for what ought to be a surcharge not a double-charge, or who simply cease to fly AT ALL.
I have not seen any real effort on the part of the airlines to address the problem at all. Apparently they are using the "don't ask, don't tell" approach to business management.
I'm willing to bet that using the 'padded bench' and 'units' approach I described above, airlines could actually pay *less* for the seating inside planes, could actually fit *more* people and make *more* money both per-flight, could actually get *more* customers who'd be less miserable or less priced-out than current approaches ensure, and serve a much greater portion of the population in a way that made everybody happier.
Best,
PJ