They are very heavy and would require a fit and able person to manhandle them.
The check-in agent made an error in this case in allocating the seats.
What utter bollox. Have you ever actually picked up one of those panels?
The real bollox though is the implied assumption that soneone of 70 is not fit and able
for that reason only.
Look around you, sunshine; I'll be 70 in 3 months time. So will lots of other fit and able people. I cannot imagine how I managed to get my zimmer frame across 20 miles of Dartmoor yesterday. Perhaps it was the pack on my back that helped.
I go for the overwing exit every flight for four reasons; firstly the legroom, and secondly because I know that I know how to get it open and out of the way fast, which 90% of your 10 - 40 year-olds in the UK would have trouble with seeing as how they are so effing thick, and thirdly because I do not want my way to the exit blocked by the 50% of that age-group who are obese as well as stupid, and lastly because I know that I probably won't panic (from experience in such situations) while I'm fairly sure that most people under 50, brought up as they are in a protective, risk-averse cocoon, will start screaming, climbing over each other, and otherwise not carrying out an orderly evacuation as soon as danger threatens, because they have never, ever, been exposed to anything more dangerous than crossing a road without doing a risk assessment.
Apart from those who join the Armed Services, and I would happily cede my seat to one of them.
Not fit and able, indeed. You touched a raw nerve with your misguided and patronising remark.
obese, geriatric with toddlers in tow
Reword that, matey. Geriatrics aren't that obese, usually, and don't come with toddlers in tow. It's obese 25-year-olds, sweating, smelly, tattooed, with toddlers in tow that frighten me.