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Pacific Island communities have to do this because of pretty severe weight issues with light aircraft and (without over-stating it) some beyond XXL local residents.

People get hinky, but I think I'd rather get on an aircraft which understood it's risk exposure to overweight than not.

Whats utterly crap is the way large people are hounded into expensive seats on specious "it's your lifestyle" reasons: If aircraft seating dimensions cannot accommodate people then just like the ambulance services, they need to adapt to the weight profile of the community they serve.

Remember: Flying is a fully regulated market. It's not actually just their business what the seat pitch is.

Price is already sufficiently mutable that if they have to take a profit hit for larger pax, thats ok with me (I am not btw, a larger passenger)

I have flown in craft where they asked us to move seats for takeoff because the loading map wasn't working out how they expected (code share can do that if too many people get specific seat allocations outside the craft operators control) and also been asked (once) to deplane with 40 or so others, so the 747 could taxi to the far slot on LAX, and then wait to have the tires cool, before we were bussed out to board on the runway. That was an experience: midnight flight out, screaming jets, those stairs and the lights vanishing off into the distance. There is something very "metal" about boarding a large aircraft on the tarmac close to launch, rather than at a gate or on the apron.

“Whats utterly crap is the way large people are hounded into expensive seats on specious "it's your lifestyle" reason”

I disagree. Airplane tickets are expensive and the seats are already extremely cramped. If you don’t adequately fit in your seat, why should the person at your side have to suffer?

Their point is that the seats are not sized to 'common people'.

At the very least I'd say it's likely a not-small portion of American adults are larger than common airline seats want them to be.

If airlines increase seat width to accommodate overweight, no of seating in aircraft will go down, which will lead to increase in per seat pricing, in effect healthy people will be subsidising overweight.
No, even __bone structure__ width, shoulders, knees to hips. Airline seats seem sized to accommodate a hypothetical 'average' adult; not the maximum of any given dimension for a even a healthy adult.
It's probably more efficient to just get two neighboring seats, lift the arm rest and get a belt extension. Chasing maximum sized people seems inefficient. Imagine designing a plane with each seat having to fit someone like Brian Shaw.
If you don't account for leg length, or lack of thereof which affect large people more than seat width, any not morbidly obese adult fit in an Airline seat. You may have a distorted view of what consist an healthy adult. And no people spending a lot of time lifting weight to grow muscles more than the typical crossfit athlete would are not healthy. They lose so much flexibility they can't do many simple thing, let alone scratch their back.

The fact is there are many non healthy adults and the question is what do we do about them. Is flying a fundamental right? Should people with over the top obesity have to pay more to use 2 seats? Should large people have to pay extra or business class tickets to get a decent leg length?

It decreases seating less than you might expect. Seating on an aircraft is usually limited by the number of emergency exits rather than actual dimensions.
I could see that being the case for pitch, maybe (though much further reductions than some airlines have done seems likely to cause medical issues for tall people). But width? The only place for that to come from is from the aisles and typical 3-3 or 2-4-2 layouts don't leave very big aisles (and the results would not be navigable for anyone using that extra seat width)
I was on a flight just yesterday, placed in a middle seat, where the two gentlemen flanking me rolled over the arm rests into my seat space. As an unhealthily slender man I am 100% comfortable subsidizing not having my seat space invaded by people who have a different shape than I. I don’t want to pay extra to personally avoid it, as I could in first class, I want to pay extra to make sure nobody suffers either side of the problem: these men were both profusely apologetic and embarrassed, and I’m sure I was not the only of us three left also physically uncomfortable.
Basically you're asking for the airlines to remove all economy seating and only have first-class-sized seating. That will massively reduce the number of passengers, and massively increase the cost to travel.

The laws of physics don't care about people's feelings.

When I buy 1 plane ticket, I expect 1.0 of a seat. Not 0.7 seats, nor 0.9 seats. Exactly 1 seat, no overhang, no getting squished. No invading the seats airspace.

Exactly 1 seat.

Okay, and how do you define a seat exactly? Because what is a seat for one person is half a seat for another or two thirds of a seat for the airline. There is no universal definition for what a seat size should be, so your comment is just hot air and doesn't add to the discussion. Even more so when pricing is so malleable and disconnected from actual physical dimensions of the plane and its interior.
> Okay, and how do you define a seat exactly?

One seat on a plane is exactly one seat on the plane. This is not some abstract thing that is being talked about here.

You're the one who said a wide person has to buy two seats in a comment above. Then we must define what the dimensions of a seat are to know what we're tealking about.
> Then we must define what the dimensions of a seat are to know what we're tealking about.

Why? We are buying a seat, not inches. But since you insist, here: https://seatguru.com/charts/generalcharts.php

How does this information move the conversation forward?

A seat consists of inches. And these vary on every airline. So yes you do need to know the inches to know how many seats to buy under your plan. In principle even an average sized person could be undersized on some theoretical airline with smaller seats -- the dimensions are key.
> A seat consists of inches.

Yes, but you aren't buying inches but a seat on a plane so it is irrelevant. The original poster said that when he buys a seat he bought a whole seat, not 0.7 nor 0.9 of that seat. How does defining that seat in inches invalidates his point?

> So yes you do need to know the inches to know how many seats to buy under your plan. In principle even an average sized person could be undersized on some theoretical airline with smaller seats -- the dimensions are key.

Yes, when you want to fly it is good to know what size a seat you are buying but notice that you saying that in no way moves the conversation forward. And nobody claimed that knowing the size of seat in inches isn't important.

If you're twice the width compared to a regular person, then that's just not feasible.
> Whats utterly crap is the way large people are hounded into expensive seats on specious "it's your lifestyle" reasons: If aircraft seating dimensions cannot accommodate people then just like the ambulance services, they need to adapt to the weight profile of the community they serve.

Airlines, like other companies, serve their owners, not the community. If the community wants to compel the company to do something, they can do it via legislature.

Sounds like what could be the setting for a Wes Anderson movie.
With lots of sideways panning camera action along the center aisle of the plane. I'm already humming the music from the Grand Budapest Hotel.
Wonder if they'll do what some airlines in USA do, people of larger weights need to buy 2 seats instead.
i've also never understood how a xxs clothes was the same price as an xxl one
Unit area material costs are small next to the costs of design, marketing, manufacture (where both extra large and extra small items take the same time to complete, have the same number of cuts and the same number of stitches -> same complexity of construction).
> same number of stitches

The only way I can see this being true is if a stitch in this context defined as a singular piece of thread used for attaching fabrics. Is this a common definition? In the common parlance I'm most familiar with, a stitch is one "in-and-out" of the thread. e.g., "I got 17 stitches across my forehead". In that context, I can't see how he large and small articles would take the same number.

You're right, the number of stitches (and amount of thread for stitching) is necessarily going to be less for smaller clothes, but it's not very significant, unless you're comparing childrens' clothes to XXXXL.
Stitches as in "stitching actions" .. whether machine driven or hand driven there are motions required to line up a piece and stitch an arm to a body, to stitch and reinforce a neck loop, etc.

These are the things that take up manufacturing time - and time and build complexity is a greater cost than mere thread or material, therefore the cost of a specific jacket (say) is dominated more by the design complexity rather than the area of material and length of thread between a small Vs a large.

It's the same with kids clothes. I think the labour and overheads are dominant - the cost of fabric is probably only a small fraction of the cost of clothes.
It is more about how much people are willing to pay for the clothes and how an SKU nightmare it would be to base price on size + how easy it is to switch adhesives barcodes. Some people are expert at that.
> Mainoumi, who reached the top division in the 1990s, weighed about the same as the England rugby captain, Owen Farrell

I wonder if Owen Farrell knows he's now a unit of measurement.

The imperial units are getting out of hand.
That section actually has an error. "There's no minimum weight requirement to become a sumo wrestler", there is, it's 67kg. Though they're getting rid of it next year, probably because they've finally figured out that it's dumb for high school students to force feed themselves 20 big macs a day just to hit some arbitrary weigh in.
> forcing JAL to lay on an additional service for 27 wrestlers

I've never seen "lay on" used this way before, but from context I take it to mean they added another plane.

According to Mirriam-Webster "lay on" is used by the British to mean "hire" (as in the opposite of "lay off") and I suppose this is a similar use.

-- U.S. English speaker.

as a UK English speaker I'm not sure I've ever heard "lay on" used to mean "hire" as M-W claims, and the OED doesn't seem to list that as a sense. The usage in this sentence is the sense the OED defines as:

"To provide for the supply of (water, gas, etc.) through pipes from a reservoir; to provide (a telephone line). Hence, to make arrangements for, to provide (refreshments, entertainment, transport, etc.)"

and which M-W defines more briefly as "provide, arrange".

The most common usage I can think of is "they laid on a great spread" which would mean a fantastic buffet was provided.

Northern England native.

I remember a story a few years ago where EasyJet had to take some passengers off a flight because it was overweight.

In that case, it was because the passengers included a much higher than typical proportion of adult men and, as it was a flight from London to Geneva in winter, there was a lot of heavy winter sports equipment in the checked baggage.

There was a story like that a few years ago.

An ATR42 on a commercial flight had to interrupt it take off above V1=VR, after the plane failed to rotate.

Pilot suspected bad weather.

BEA concluded to rugby team on board.

They then made recommendations about how to sit these guests. It's only in French, unfortunately https://bea.aero/les-enquetes/evenements-notifies/detail/acc...

"the passenger lists included sumo wrestlers, whom they estimated weighed an average of 120kg – far more than the 70kg average, the Yomiuri said."

Sheeeesh, an average of 70kg sounds low. But then again the average reported weight in the USA is 181 pounds, or 82kg, which ALSO seems low.