The real victims

From Will Saletan’s piece today on United’s plan to charge hyper-obese people more for flights:

Lots of airlines are cracking down on fat people. Why? Because the airlines have made a business calculation: The wrath of passengers on whom these people encroach now exceeds the expected wrath of the fat people themselves. The cost of being nice to oversize fliers has become too high. A United spokeswoman tells the Chicago Tribune that the carrier was moved by hundreds of complaints from fliers “who did not have a comfortable flight because the person next to them infringed on their seat.” A Southwest Airlines rep tells a similar story: The company, which has already cracked down on oversize passengers, still gets more angry mail from encroached customers than from fat ones.

This is a key point oft-ignored in the debate over charging obese people more when their girth spills over onto a second seat: the real victims here are passengers forced to endure some stranger’s fleshy folds engulfing them as they try and relax during their flight. I’m sorry that you don’t have the self control to work out more and eat less have a glandular/thyroid problem, but that doesn’t give you the right to infringe on my personal space or take up the space I purchased for this flight.