Airline Seats

of the Not-So-Distant Future

By Debi Harris

I was reading on the Internet a while back about executives for a certain airline who are thinking of charging passengers by the pound for a seat on their planes! And you thought flying was expensive before. If the U.S. airline industry gets a hold of this idea no one will ever be able to afford to fly again. We all know that Americans are getting heavier and wider. I blame it on evolution. Man has always changed and adapted to his environment. Unfortunately, that environment now consists of McDonalds, Burger King and Taco Bell, among many, many others.

We can’t blame it all on fast food franchises. When man settled this country and started farming, meals  grew larger and larger to accommodate all the hard work that was required to maintain the farm, keep food on the table and a roof over their families’ heads. Eventually, farming waned and city life became the way of life as children grew up and sought an easier way to make a living that also paid more money, such as not spending their days digging in the dirt under the hot summer sun to grow wheat and vegetables. No, they moved to the city so they can spend their days digging in the dirt under the hot summer sun to grow grass and flowers! But at least they weren’t forced to grow their own food.

So restaurants, seeing a need to feed all the hard-working Americans who were not growing their own food, got into the act. In order to lure business away from their competitors, restaurateurs started offering more food for the buck and soon it became the norm.

But I digress.

Wait till we all have to line up at the airport for weigh-in. How annoying would the lines be then? Do you think they’d make us stand on those little scales they use to weigh our luggage?

Airlines will probably start investing in fast food franchises to be placed in the front of the ticket counters so passengers will be tempted to eat to while away the hours spent in line trying to get a seat on a plane they’re going to be charged by the pound for. Everybody knows that one fast food hamburger adds 10 lbs. immediately to your waistline. The typical woman would probably fast for a week before her flight to save five bucks on weigh-in. Wouldn’t it be ironic if we ended up paying more per pound for a seat on an airplane than we did for the hamburger we just ate?

Fortunately, this airline is not in the United States. No U.S. airline executive would have the nerve to ask a lady how much she weighs; her doctor barely gets away with that. That’s a woman’s worst nightmare. I practically get naked when I’m forced to weigh in at the doctor’s office. Not so my husband. He’ll hop on the scales with his heavy shoes, jacket and a pocket full of keys, billfold, change, nuts, bolts, screws, etc. He’s crazy! And I never know what to put down on the form when I’m asked how much I weigh. Do I have to put down what I weigh fully dressed? I usually fudge it a little (okay, a lot).

Can you imagine the line at the ticket desk when the agent asks a woman her weight? That would make the trip to the airport a lot more interesting. Women would be dressed in their skimpiest outfits in the dead of winter. Guess that’d make TSA’s job a lot easier! And since the pilots have to know the combined weight of the luggage, fuel and passengers, we’re all in BIG trouble. Hope he can get the plane off the ground. Airplanes may end up turning into giant buses (or ships, depending on where you’re going. This would certainly upset the cruise ship industry).

And is it me, or are the seats on those dang things getting narrower? Instead of First Class, Business Class and Coach Class, the airline will end up with a new fleet of planes for the widening of Americans’ backsides. They could rename them Large, Extra Large and Take a Bus. Instead of paying by the pound, (my personal nightmare) they would charge by the square inch of the seat. Measure your rear and figure out which size seat you need. Now we have math involved. I have a hard enough time figuring out tips when I eat at restaurants, hence the need to figure out the square root of my backside. (Maybe I shouldn’t have admitted that little tidbit.) Anyhow, at the airport they have those little baskets for passengers to check to see if their carry-ons will fit under the seat; do you suppose they would come up with a way to measure backsides to make sure you weren’t lying about your size for a cheaper ticket?

Of course, all the women would be squeezed into the smallest seats regardless of their actual size. No lady would ever admit she needed a large or extra large anything.