travel
the new and improved airline ticketing policy
benjamin and i tend to entertain ourselves throughout the day with random banter, and recently he sent me the following article:
OTTAWA (Reuters) - Obese people have the right to two seats for the price of one on flights within Canada, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled on Thursday.
The high court declined to hear an appeal by Canadian airlines of a decision by the Canadian Transportation Agency that people who are “functionally disabled by obesity” deserve to have two seats for one fare.
The airlines had lost an appeal at the Federal Court of Appeal in May and had sought to launch a fresh appeal at the Supreme Court. The court’s decision not to hear a new appeal means the one-person-one-fare policy stands.
The appeal had been launched by Air Canada, Air Canada Jazz and WestJet.
(Reporting by Randall Palmer)
how is this even remotely fair? i am being punished for the “disability” of those who are unwilling to change the physical condition in which they have been living? - ultimately by paying higher prices for my own plane tickets. i have a very very huge problem with obesity because a healthy lifestyle is a choice, and whereas obesity is certainly a genetic trait, the sedentary lifestyle is not. i have an even bigger problem with paying more. i have always been an advocate of the pay-per-pound airline tickets. trust me, i will GLADLY step on a scale and take advantage of the fact that i am the size of an average 12 year-old girl and shell out a little bit less money.
benjamin, however, gave the ultimate solution to this problem and has figured out how to price tickets. i suggest he submit it to delta:
There is a baseline there for which the airline must account. If the total cost of flying an empty plane from point A to point B is X, and flying a full plane (with average weight for passengers and baggage) is Y, then you would have to charge a base of X/C, with C being the capacity (in no. of seats), plus a weight based charge of WI(Y-X)/C, with WI being a weight index of your weight (plus baggage) over the average weight. Total cost of a flight is [X+WI(Y-X)]/C
pretty good, huh!?
on a somewhat related note, my father and i have been having dialogues about the comments we receive about our physical appearances. dad is 5′7″ and about 130 on a heavy day (mom is 5′3″ 100), so you can see where i get my tremendous size. regardless, people are always telling both of us that we need to eat more, or that we look unhealthy. for those of you who know me and have seen me with less-than-conservative clothing on, would you consider me too small? dad can lift a ridiculous amount, runs more (and faster) than i do, and has a fabulous diet (diet does not mean less food, it means better dietary choices). i have an appointment with a nutritionist on 12/6 so that i can work on losing some of the “extra fat” that my nutritionist says that i am storing. to be honest, i’m pretty stoked. i’m working on that jessica biel/evangeline lilly body. oh, it’s gonna get here. just in time for bikini season and my 25th birthday cruise.
Jessica Biel
i love how in the movie wall-E, all of the humans have robots and machines doing everything for them to the point that they cannot think for themselves and are entirely overweight. i honestly think that we are well on our way to that point. it is just a shame that nature’s rules of survival of the fittest does not seem to apply anymore. sigh.