152 June 2013 www.bahrainthismonth.com lastword and a hand-carry full of paper towel to wipe my sweating brow. Unlike those skinny torsos that bring boxes, televisions, plastic bags and trolleys, I don’t fill up the overhead bins before anyone can even get seated beside them. What about those inconsiderate passengers who abuse the hand-carry rules and bring two bags, a suit pack, camera, hand bag, duty free and snacks on board. Why don’t the airlines enforce their own regulations, or charge people for the ‘excess’ they bring with them? Perhaps, like cargo companies, the airlines should charge by dimensional size, which includes size and weight, where a pound of feathers costs more than a pound of gold due to taking up more space. I may be worth my weight in gold but I take up less room than the skinny guy and his removal truck filling the cargo hold. But, okay, fat flyers use more fuel. Then rid the plane of china, cutlery, glassware, magazines and paper in first and business class. It’s all about weight, so why carry heavy luxuries. One thing I can’t object to is reality — I am fatter than most. If airlines want me to pay for the fact that I’m heavier, then you know what… I really wouldn’t mind, except for one thing! I’ll pay more but put in a new class and bigger seats for fatties. Why should I pay by the pound and yet squeeze my hulking largess into the cattle pens in economy. And that’s really the issue, I guess. According to what some airlines have suggested about weight and cost, it would be easier for me to pay for a business class seat and sit in luxury and dine in style. Perhaps my anger is wasted when, in essence, they just want us fatties to sit in comfort upfront. Not such a bad idea, although I‘m not sure how so much weight all the way forward can help the plane get off the ground! If skinny accountants don’t want to pay for our excess, they should walk to their destination and forget flying altogether. I’m too fat to walk. And if I did, you’d want to charge me for ruining the roadways and sidewalks. Better still, skinny accountants should stay trim and fit and walk to Paris from Bahrain — then they wouldn’t have to worry about us fat flyers and what it costs us to get somewhere. I have travelled regularly since my youth. I received my first set of golden wings prior to frequent flyer points being a thought in the minds of marketing managers around the world. Airlines have come and gone, crashed and bankrupted themselves many times over in the five decades I have been on this planet. Some great concepts, strategies and ideas have blazed across the skies over the same period, and some truly stupid ones, too. Hooters Airways was my favourite. It surely can’t be easy to run an airline; so many competitors and so many routes which surely can’t be profitable. Yet there are always a few of us wanting to go somewhere unusual and we expect a plane to take us there. So, why my bursting blood vessels? Well, recently in the hunt for profits a few airlines have discussed the ever-growing girth of passengers and have toyed with the option of charging passengers by their weight. Samoan Airlines, in the Pacific, has in fact begun to do so. Here’s a word to those sickly, thin, stick-like accountants who contrived this idea in the safety of their food-bare offices. I have flown often. In flying to 100 countries over five decades and around 800 flights, I’m sure I have kept airlines profitable. The fact that fuel prices are high right now is not my fault! I can think of fewer, more stupid ideas in my lifetime than to suggest that fat people get charged by weight. Perhaps in cake shops, skinny people should be charged triple for entering the door! You are, after all, wasting the staff’s time and energy bringing your frail bodies into such an establishment. If flights are all about weight, then I suggest something fairer. I may be morbidly obese according to the scales, but I usually also travel very light. I’m fat; we sweat and we hate to lift heavy items. Frankly, baggage bothers me. I fly with a change of shirt JAMES CLAIRE I have never used this page for venting raw emotion and personal fury, but this month a subject has my chubby cheeks blazing red — airlines! Flying Large
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