Quote:
Originally Posted by chemgear
At first I was going to say that an average of 150 pounds would be an overly low estimate. But then I realized you were talking about the carry-on.
They should start charging fatter people more - $20/pound above <insert random magic number here>  |
I suppose a perfectly fair system would have people showing up to the airport to be weighed along with all their travel possessions, then paying for what they're bringing aboard at a fixed cost/pound ratio. You wouldn't be buying a ticket for a fixed price, you'd be reserving a seat and a cost/pound ratio for a given flight. Of course, people would scream discrimination every which way, but it would be absolutely unambiguous: you want to take more? you pay more. Maybe you handle first-class / economy with an additional fixed charge or a multiplier or something.
Of course, this more or less supposes that the cost/pound per passenger is fixed from an empty airplane all the way up to a full one (I don't think that's completely unreasonable, since passengers and baggage are just "weight" and don't affect aerodynamics other than maybe weight distribution), but there could very well be some kind of efficiency curve based on partial/full loading that needs to be factored in. How airlines arrive at such a cost would likely be proprietary as well, as it could be derived from staff wages, maintenance intervals, and all manner of other contributory factors in addition to the obvious ones. Ideally the derivation of such rates would be openly transparent, but that's pretty unlikely--they'd probably just settle on a flat fee for most flights based on broad average from things like the type of plane used and distance flown.
(I've often wondered what it costs a typical airline in real dollars to fly a pound from, say, London to Toronto.)
I also think that it would lead to many bizarre cases where people go for enemas/stomach pumps/cleanses before going on flights, just so they don't have to pay as much. Maybe some even put helium balloons in their baggage to reduce the apparent weight.
It's all very amusing to think about, but I doubt it ever really flies.