Photo by The Telegraph
I read where Air France is going to demand passengers of a “certain girth” buy a second seat to accommodate their prosperity. It must have sounded like the greatest plan since the Maginot Line to a conference room in Paris full of bony-assed managers before they left after lunch to spend the afternoon with their mistresses.
My only concession in this piece will be to understand that nobody would purposely choose to sit next to some sweat hog in the middle of July whose excess flotsam and jetsam spill over the area where the armrest should be…but isn’t because otherwise the heavy person could put numbers on it and take his or her temperature rectally if the divider wasn’t in a raised 
position. All guys fantasize sitting next to some 20-something Brazilian fashion model who is unaware her blouse is missing six buttons and she was in such a hurry to leave her condo that she forgot to wear a bra.
Women, on the other hand, are hoping the empty seat next to them is just waiting for Brad Pitt to wander into coach (right!) wearing a Speedo and a muscle t-shirt, waxing ecstatic that the empty seat next to this Sandra Bernhard look-alike contest winner is his for the next nine hours.
Let’s start assessing blame. Here is some poor fat bastard whose family was so poor that from his infancy they’ve only been able to afford spaghetti and surplus government cheese – France’s staple it seems like. And to wash it down his family has had to import boxes of Carlo Rossi’s second-tier Chablis/Burgundy mix. After 40-50 years of this diet the poor Frenchman (we’ll call him Jac Strop) has an ass the size of the Cathedral of Notre Dame. Totally not his fault, either.
Being a salesman at a deodorant company in France and getting paid on commission doesn’t really offer much in the way of discretionary income.
While Monsieur Strop has been amassing his weight, Air France has been burning hours on a Cray Super Computer trying to see how feasible it would be to put in another 50-100 seats on an already-jammed 747. They probably believe that their aircraft was named “747” because that’s how many potential seats they can install in them in what would be a perfect world – no galley, no lavatories, no closets and one aisle. Air France is not alone in this quest, but they’re the target of this diatribe so if they don’t like it they can beso my derriere (pardon mois the mixed metaphors).
Instead of offering their passengers the opportunity to have a little room for themselves to make a 5,000-mile journey somewhat more pleasant they view it as an opportunity to open the revenue flood gates. Furthermore you can bet the hacienda on the fact that the aircraft’s belly is chock-a-block with freight – everything from mail to French Ticklers.
The average 747 can carry about 240,000 pounds of freight or passengers or a combination of the two.
Air France is considering charging overweight passengers for an extra seat. Here's what happens when all of the plus sized passengers sit on one side of the plane
Some of the long-haul routes are flown by aircraft with an 800,000+-pound gross weight. For the sake of argument let’s say there are 450 passengers aboard a 747-400 flying from Paris-New York. Let’s say that each man, woman and child passenger averages 300 pounds. That’s 135,000 pounds of flesh on the main and upper deck – meaning there’s a surplus of 105,000 pounds for luggage and belly freight. You’re telling me that with this much surplus an airline can’t reconfigure their wide-bodied aircraft to accommodate eight-across seating instead of ten…and a seat pitch of 36” or more instead of 30”?
As it is now the airlines might as well offer Lamaze classes before boarding economy class on a typical aircraft. I’m sure they could find some way of increasing revenue from that as well.
I don’t have a problem when buying a ticket online, which is quickly becoming the norm, answering a question of how much do I weigh? This will provide the airline with the opportunity of peppering heavier passengers throughout the airplane and keeping middle-row seats open in case they’re needed by the obese. People aren’t morbidly obese simply because there’s now a cartel of Chinese buffet owners. In many cases it’s a medical reason. By those standards does a person with severe acne have to buy an extra seat in case a zit happens to explode in flight?
I’m not letting you off the hook either, Southwest Airlines. Truth be told, your demographics heavily consist of Wal-Mart shopping pasta eaters. Cut them some slack (and stop enabling their poor fat-asses with endless bags of peanuts. They probably have enough candy bars in their carry-on luggage to feed Coxey’s Army whoever they were). Your industry flies millions of passengers per day on a worldwide basis. Just how many of them would actually need to squeeze into two seats? Show some compassion and (God forbid) customer service. 
As for Air France, think of something else besides who is the next group your home country is going to piss off. Obesity has direct links to a medical problem. The closest body odor comes to that is an allergy to soap…and that can be overcome easily.
If the world’s air carriers start penalizing passengers for every abnormality I can see the day that the only passengers who will be flying Air France are the French. And tickets will skyrocket in price because chances are the interior of their aircraft will have to be burned and replaced after every flight. The flying public is not comprised of returning Algerian prisoners of war. You want to push your sauce-laden cuisine on the world? Live with the consequences. After all…no one is better at surrendering than the French.
