Advice for large passengers
 

Good to see an airline providing practical suggestions

http://www.yemenia.com/new2/magazin/20/03.pdf

I read through it, despondent to see that they had left out 'Lose some weight, you pig'.

Select your flight carefully - if the plane is only half full
they might just be able to take off.

Work to get an empty seat beside you
if your potential neighbours don't do it for you.

Preboard
Many airlines allow people with special needs to board ahead of the rest of the other passengers
Given that these people are usually elderly, in a wheelchair, or otherwise incapacitated, chow down a burger before your flight, because hey - you're special too!

Check out the tray table
Is that skinny guy in front of you denying you room to scoff your body weight in fries? "Stewardess!!!!! HELP ME - I CAN'T EAT!!!"

Put up the armrest
Spill your mounds of sweaty, odiferous adipose tissue onto the person next to you - before takeoff! Let him feel the pillowed fat of your atrophied, soft arm, and to Hell with regulations.

Ask for a seatbelt extender
In the event of an incident, you'll be needed as a valued passenger to (a) block the exit; then (b) collapse the slide and ensure the people behind you pick up the insurance for those cool compound fractures and third-degree burns.

Plan for restroom problems
Many aircraft restrroms are so small as to be unusable by people chucking hippos into the lavatories. Try to block the ones at the airport before travelling. Ask if there is a handicapped restroom on board so you can sit there for hours while old people have to irrigate the aisle.

Work on having a sense of humour
When someone calls you a vile, worthless, corpulent and palpable drain on the Universe's resources, it's just a wee joke. And aren't people like you meant to be jolly?

BOFH

This suggests a whole new way of making money. Reduce the width of the seat so a 'normal' (whatever that is) size person can't fit, and then insist that they buy two seats! Mr. O'Leary, it's my idea, but you can have it for a percentage!!

Excuse me....what?!? :=

Again.....what?!? :=

Anybody can explain? What the heck is up with Yemenia?!?

BTW radeng, MOL has already had this idea, in fact his latest "no recline" seats are by far the smallest, narrowest seats I've ever travelled in (and I am a size 6)....I believe as soon as the charging for pre-boarding is in full swing he'll just do what you have suggested :ooh:

FBW

PS: tightslot please do not delete my quotes, I actually had to write the text as it wouldn't let me copy and paste. Plus, I am quoting something relevant and it's not a repetition. Thank you!:)

So now we know that Yemenia has inconsiderate flight attendants that deliberately embarass our more filled out pax :* And instead of Yemenia teaching them how to deliver an extender in a non-embarassing way, they advise pax to buy their own.

Way to go on customer service! :yuk:

Not just that, which I totally agree with, but apparently this is an extract from an article that was in their own in-flight magazine?!? :eek:

If my company wrote something like that in our magazine about flight attendants and our safety equipment (or lack of:rolleyes: ), there would be an insurrection to get rid of the people responsible for those words!! :ouch:

FBW I know, it also said about unable to locate the extenders in the PDF document which makes it sound as if the crew do not know the location of SEP equipment onboard the aircraft. Yememia is one airline that I will not be flying with! :*

I mean, I don't know about you guys/gals, but there have been times, on a full night flight, with everybody sleeping and the FSB coming on, where I have failed to wake up the grumpy guy in the window seat covered in 2 blankets and his coat to check if he had his belt fastened. So it's wrong and against the SOPs, shoot me.

The fact tha Yemenia admits that sometimes they are not 100% perfect is unusual, but shows a refreshing sense of reality. As oposed to the unrealistic management prose usually found in documents written by penpushers from corporate commercial departments who in most cases apear to have only the sketchiest idea of what actually happens in an airliner cabin.
Way I read it, they are not saying that their FAs are inconsiderate. They are empathising with the fact that obese people probably fear the potential embarrassment from potentially inconsiderate FAs.

Or are you saying that fat people are immune to apprehension and FAs are never inconsiderate? :confused:

PS: at the top of a PDF document there is a button that says 'select' which you use to select text bits. A bit further to the right there's the 'double sheet of paper' icon that copies the selected text. Took me 4 years to figure that out, maybe that's why I'm an FA rather than an engineer? ;)

With those safety procedures (pretending that the seatbelt is fastened when it's not and not knowing the location of SEP equipment, as you have said) I won't be flying with them either! :rolleyes:

I once saw someone flying who was so fat he was bound to overflow into the next seat.

If this occurs to me, am I within my rights to insist that one of us is moved to an alternate seat? I have strong H&S concerns about getting out if stuck next to someone who is extremely fat.

JUUD, I hear what you say but their "buy your own seatbelt" is a misleading advice. I cannot buy my own seatbelt and use it on board! Extension seatbelts have to comply with strict regulations,they are part of the a/c SEP equipment and are all the same, the pax might buy the wrong thing, not strong enough etc etc I could go on forever.
Plus, not enough seat belts (whether extension or normal seat belt -it's not unusual for naughty ppl to steal them occasionally:mad: ) is a no-go. No seatbelt, no take off! A missing belt is just not acceptable!! I was in the position to have to offload two couples with their babies on a return sector from TLS as we were lacking 2 extension seatbelts (NOT our fault, that plane type always has the same number, it was the airline's who had accepted way too many infants for that flight!)

As for not disturbing people when they sleep and the seatbelt goes off, I am totally against it. I always "disturb" them as their safety is my job and I cannot foresee how the turbulence is going to affect us all. If the captain makes that decision for us we (including sleeping pax) should respect it. I do not agree with this practice but I accept that in some circumstances some FAs turn a blind eye.:ouch: However there's a substantial difference between doing it occasionally and not advertising it and actually writing it black on white on your own in-flight magazine!!!!

http://members.aol.com/ajaynejr/fatso.htm

As a person of larger size (i.e. fat), I find most of this thread very offensive, particularly BOFH's post which although at first reading seems tongue in cheek, but using the "n-word" replacement test, it's actually extremely offensive. You can't just make this stuff up for a joke without believing in it as well.

Tips for fat passengers:

a) Check for MD80s, 757's and ancient 737's. They suck and you WILL need a seat belt extender if your BMI > 30. Newer 737's and all Airbus do not need such an item as they have adequate girth.

b) Be wary of going for the extra legroom on over the wing exit rows in old 737's as these have hard fixed sides to the seats and must be incredibly uncomfortable for all concerned except children, jockeys and very small women, all of whom are ineligible for that row.

c) If you are seated next to a steroid abuser, it's never going to work. One of you has to ask for a smaller row mate. My most uncomfortable flight ever was next to a buff gentleman who was easily a metre wide.

d) Newer 737's and Boeings and pretty much all Airbus have curved meal tables. These make it easier to eat the ever diminishing "meals" they serve.

e) I tend to just put up the armrest. One airline I travelled on (a Delta subsidiary?) just made everyone leave them up on the ancient 757 as not only was seat pitch extremely uncomfortable, seat width was a joke. I wish more airlines had this policy, particularly in cattle class.

f) Travel at non-peak times and aim for the aisle near the front, or seat 1A on a low cost carrier. This has the most space, will most likely not have a passenger next to you, allowing you to use the middle table.

I remember not even six years ago being able to use my Dell laptop (larger than my current Mac) on an Ansett 767 in cattle class. Somehow, over the last few years, it's become increasingly difficult to use laptops in planes, even my smallish Mac - except in business class. Seats have been getting smaller. In the same time, I've lost circa six kilograms, so if anything I'm smaller now too, but it's not helping.

For all you folks suggesting that I and the other fat SLF lose some weight, you should try it sometime. It's the hardest thing you'll ever have to do. Unlike alcohol or drugs, you can't stop eating, and for very frequent business travelers like me, I can't easily pick or choose my carrier, when I fly, the class I fly in, or where I can eat once I am at my destination. Eating on the road is one the major reasons I'm the shape I am in.

Saying that, if there's any other SLF wanting to start a weight loss program, me and the wife are losing weight to start a family. You're welcome to join us. We could start a thread, share exercise and food tips. That technique helped two of my friends lose a combined 75 kg.

Andrew

Advice For Large Passengers
 

come onto one of my flights!.
im a FA,thats FLIGHT ATTENDANT and FAT ADMIRER.
i always give extra care and service to the large female pax.
ive never meet anyone to big for my tastes.
SSBBWs rule!.

I'm rather fat, and on some Airbus' (shouldn't that be 'Airbi' for the plural?), I need a seat belt extender, and others I don't. So I actually measured one seat belt one day. At maximum extension, it was 36 inches long.........(this wasn't on BA, but a US loco)
As the size of people generally has increased (bigger bone structures than 100 years ago, ignoring fat) you'd thonk the airlines would have figured this out. What is needed now is a regulation on minimum seat width and a minimum length seatbelt.

Why did they not use images from Sana'a airport instead of FRA?

vanderaj

I really hope that you don't go around applying this 'test' to everything you hear to figure out whether you should be offended or not. Why fish for insults?

You also don't need to bring along your straw man of saying that losing weight is difficult - at what point was that refuted? Just how fat you, your wife, or anyone else wants to be - is absolutely none of my - or anyone else's - business. It is your right to eat as much as you want, and to have it any other way would be an abhorrent intrusion into your life. You seem sentient enough to realise that being fat brings its own problems, and I'm sure that you weigh (snigger) up the pros and cons of your lifestyle.

That is, until you make it my problem. When obese people intrude into what I have every right to expect is my space, their right to gorge themselves on cheap, greasy, mass-produced cheeseburgers and voraciously mopping up any dropped lardy goo from the cardboard box with salty french fries has to be called into question, don't you think?

BOFH