Vitamin G

This Airline Makes You "Pay as You Weigh." Can We Discuss?

The possibility of charging passengers who weigh more to fly the friendly skies has loomed for a while...but now, one airline has finally made it a reality.

Samoa Air has implemented a "pay as you weigh" system, charging by the kilogram instead of by the seat. The chief executive of the airline says this is the fairest way: "There are no extra fees in terms of excess baggage or anything—it is just a kilo is a kilo is a kilo," he says.

It goes like this: Passengers book their flights online, where they have to enter their weight and the weight of their luggage. The overall rate depends on the distance; short flights are $1 per kilogram, while longer ones are $4.16 per kilogram. At the destination airport, passengers are weight to be sure they didn't book their flight based on a made-up weight.

Experts say that how much weight an airplane carries is important to the aircraft's overall safety—the PR manager for Samoa Tourism says, "When you're only fitting eight to 12 people in these aircraft and you've got some bigger Samoans getting on, you do need to weigh them and distribute that weight evenly throughout the aircraft, to make sure everyone's safe.... At the end of the day, I don't care who they're weighing or how they're weighing them as long as it's safe." And other experts say that this kind of system could utlimately save jet fuel costs and decrease C02 emissions.

Over the years, we've all heard lots of stories about various airlines asking larger passengers to buy extra seats, but this is the first time an airline has actually put a "pay as you weigh" procedure into place.

I once went for a ride in an engine-less airplane—a silent glider that did all these loop-de-loops (it was totally fun! Except I started to really regret having a full Indian-food lunch just before, urp)—and one of the questions they asked before I got in the plane was how much I weighed. It's kind of an unsettling question, right? But I was honest with the number, because they explained how our overall weight would directly affect the safety of the flight.

So what I'm trying to say is that I get the safety angle of this. But I also understand why passengers who weigh a bit more—or passengers who have weight and body-image issues—might feel really uncomfortable about the idea.

Thoughts? Is this a fair idea? Should passengers' ticket prices be based on what they weigh?

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Photo: Thinkstock

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