Because I'm not overweight, just 6"7. Why should I pay more to fly for being born tall? Should black people pay more overall for being taller on average? It's not vanity it's equality...
As a very pale-skinned person, I have to spend more on sunscreen. Is that unfair?
If they were sold per-resource-used, heavier passengers would be able to offset this (negligible) cost by bringing less baggage, for instance.
(Heck, discount Euro airlines will charge you for anything over a small backpack.)
Baggage is sold on a partially resource-used basis. Airline tickets [currently] are not. There is talk about changing that, and people are discussing their feelings about that potential change.
One obvious difference is that it's easy to choose to take less baggage, but I cannot simply choose to get a foot shorter.
My girlfriend is a foot shorter than me, however, so in some ways my size is offset by hers! Almost like people are different and airlines have chosen to sell to the average instead of selling on a per-resource-used basis.
If the average has changed, and they want to continue their current pricing model, then they need to adjust it to the new average.
If they want to change their pricing model, which is what some people in this thread are discussing, then people are...going to discuss it, some people are going to disagree with the change.
To stop this conversation about width versus height, we will have to have frames on the airport through which you have to fit in case you want to pay for only one chair.
Maybe those Japanese 1-person sleeping bunks would be an idea.
Why are healthy people forced to subsidize obesity? 99% of overweight issues are something that is under direct personal control, unlike cancer or genetic diseases.
If we asked people to really pay for resource usage, why would anyone go with insurance to begin with?
The ADA is generally regarded as a generally good thing, especially insofar as it influences the design of new construction to be more accessible to begin with, but it's not without flaws (e.g. turning disabled persons into liability factories - http://www.mercurynews.com/2016/04/10/serial-ada-lawsuit-fil... ).
It's far less clear that we should levy a similar mandate on every business ever in order to mitigate every single difference in life circumstances. In the case here, it should be quite reasonable for airlines to charge people for a portion of their carriage by the kilogram, like they already charge people for extra leg room - it'd make tons of sense, and the only reason that they don't do it everywhere already is because a standardized price makes the transaction easier to accomplish.
Let me quibble with that slightly as it is a pet peeve of mine: we are all going to get old. Facilities for "the disabled" benefit EVERYONE eventually.
No, that logic makes perfect sense. Firms can charge whatever they want. If you cost more to fly, then firms can charge you for that.
Weight X Distance X rate
Treat humans like Packages, I am sure that will go over well
Because it costs more to provide the service to you.
(A prime example is housing; where there is a housing shortage, the construction cost is much lower than the price at the point of sale).
Should we charge more? I don't know, I'm not an airline company.
Why should I pay more to subsidise your flight just because of how I was born?
Equality? Sounds like another blatant example of tall privilege to me.