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Samoa Air Rolling Out "Pay As You Weigh" Fares
cylonlover writes "Thrifty Samoans looking to take a trip may want to shed a few pounds before booking a flight with Samoan Air after the airline announced the implementation of a 'pay as you weigh' system. Unlike some other airlines that have courted controversy by forcing some obese passengers to purchase two seats, Samoa's national carrier will charge passengers based on their weight."
They have a demo fare calculator for the curious.
I have been to Samoa, and you see a lot of extremely obese people there, even by American standards, so this does not surprise me.
I have a definite issue with this sort of a system. Why should I, a 5' 10" man have to pay more for weighing 180# than a woman that's 5' tall and weighing only 100#? Genetics has a huge impact there, this isn't the result of my choosing to be an extra 10" taller than the woman and carrying the requisite weight that entails, it's an issue of the genes that I was born with.
What's interesting about their approach is that it seems to ignore baggage, which is something which people can easily do something about. Sure, the morbidly obese can and should lose weight, but this seems like an awful lot of unwarranted discrimination against people who are taller and just larger regardless of causation.
That's really the bottom line here. Despite the negative stigma this may cause to the airline, I'm actually suprised this hasn't come about sooner. As it says, these are not big jets; they're small planes and the population doesn't exactly have a reputation for being skinny (and we can blame industrial "progress" for that).
If computers were people, I'd be a misanthrope.
It appears that their cost formula is a strictly linear equation:
Cost (price) = weight (kilograms) x rate (price per kilogram)
Though their cost formula doesn't take into account the amount of airplane that each person also needs to haul around in addition to themselves; the price to fly children is disproportionately cheap, while larger adults are disproportionately expnsive.
I probably would have priced it as such if my goal were to meet expenses
Cost (price) = fixed_cost (price) + weight (kilograms) x rate (price per kilogram)
Clothing Manufacturers will soon price their garments based on the size, arguing that size 48 pants require 42% more fabric and stitching than a size 34 and are also bulkier to ship.
Does the ADA apply to American Samoa?
If so, taller people, who tend to be heavier than shorter people, will sue for discrimination based on the "handicap" of being tall.
They may not have to sue the airline, they may sue the regulatory agency asking for a court order for the agency to rescind the permission it granted the airline to use this fare structure.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
if you weigh more, it requires more gasoline, and total weight must be calculated on how the plane will preform. Now as a red blooded American, I also agree with this, if you don't like it don't fly it, or loose some weight, and stop being a pussy and saying its discrimination, at this point is about math and the total weight of the plane.
I am used to flying steerage / cargo class on airlines, getting service that is generally no better than that given to packages that I ship. I generally pay UPS by the pound, why shouldn't I pay airlines the same way?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
> They have a demo fare calculator for the curious.
"Sir, there's been an incident. Samoan Air Demo Calculator is down."
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
More for longer flights. You estimate your weight when you book, then weigh in before the flight.
Lol.
Yes they are. "Step 2. Enter your details, including your estimated weight(s) of passengers and baggage"
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
Go talk to Bob Barker about Samoans...
man those samoans are a surly bunch
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I'm big, and this seems perfectly reasonable to me. Weight and size affects the cost of transport, and it may affect seating as well.
Though I have to say, if you charge more, but don't arrange for the comfort of both the larger persons and those that might be seated near them, you really aren't addressing the issue all that well. Pretending a seven foot tall guy fits in, or behind, or in front of, a seat designed for a five foot tall person (who apparently only has one arm, judging by the armrest configurations) isn't fooling anyone. Likewise, for widebody people, a seat designed for narrow hips doesn't cut it. If I sit in front of you, my head will be in your dinner plate if I recline at all. Well, ok, your peanut bag, anyway. If you sit in front of me, you're likely to find my feet right behind yours. This is part of the reason I no longer fly. The rest being accounted for by the TSA nonsense.
Frankly, I'm amazed that "regular" size people put up with typical airline seating. Outside of first class. That's something else again.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
They could just as well budget 500 lbs or so per passenger for passenger and luggage and set their prices accordingly.
Skinny people and light packers would be extra profit.
No need to be an ass about things.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Bad enough a brother gotta be called fat. Now he gotta break out a calculator to figure out what "fat" is in kilograms too.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
You sir, are an asshole.
Being a rather skinny guy at 65kg, I'd obviously be OK with this. What I do wonder about is seat sizes/leg room. Does the cost of my ticket entitle me to as much space as someone who weighs 130kg (either by virtue of being tall or wide) who paid double what I did? That's the only thing I can immediately see as being unfair...
Maybe they should also increase the fee for health insurance more significantly if you're enormous. That would have to be more of a BMI thing but seriously, I should not be paying this much for insurance. I think the average increase for tobacco users is like 40% and it's even less for fat people. Well guess what! It should be 10x for tobacco users and 10x for fat people and then they can easily drop mine 4x. Talk about a motivator to lose weight and stop smoking! Flood insurance is calculated precisely by risk of actually flooding. Why not health insurance? In fact one trampoline or pool alone can double your homeowner's insurance because that's the mathematical increase in probability of having a claim. If you're 400 pounds or smoke a pack a day, I'd say your odds of needing healthcare actually exceed my own by 1000x.
So yeah, plane tickets, health insurance, buffets, hit them everywhere that it's realistic so they can get an idea of the actual impact on society and business costs because they're so damn fat.
As someone with daughter that just turned two years old, meaning we now have to pay for a ticket for her to fly, this sounds like a great deal to me.
You're confusing unreasonable discrimination -- based upon things that actually have no effect such as skin color or sex -- with reasonable discrimination -- based upon things that do have an actual effect such as bringing your pet on board when your pet is a puppy, as opposed to bringing your pet on board when your pet is an elephant. Weight and size actually affect cost of transport. Is it fair to average out the costs, so that people who, as you point out, through no fault of their own, are lighter than you, end up paying a portion of your transport costs? It might be convenient, but is is actually fair? Now consider: most anti-discrimination law is in place to impose fairness where fairness wasn't happening. So do you really think that such law would be properly employed to make that 120 kg woman pay for ~20 kg of your ticket? If so, why? So you can pretend to weigh 140 kg?
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Asians fly for less than europeans?
women fly for less than men?
amputees fly for less then their whole counterparts?
younger people fly for less than older people?
And on a weight loss program. It does seem reasonable that heavy people should pay more for an airline ticket. It promotes health.
except they are...
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
It is a shame because the ridicule only makes the problem worse. Obesity should not be considered deviance but unfortunately it is. Once I get to my goal weight, I'm thinking of doing an event to raise awareness and empower those who are obese to transform themselves.
If your luggage weighs more than you do, you have other issues.. and besides, its normal to pay some for the cargo you are shipping when moving..
Hivemind harvest in progress..
I think AC is right, this might have been posted by Samoa Air on April 1st and is just now getting to this timely site.
Only I can judge you.
I'm guessing this will be yet another airline that Kevin Smith refuses to fly on.
Reseource Limit Reached on the pay-by-weight calculator. Someone step off the scale please.
If you try using the demo calculator as of 11:00 EST the website is overloaded and gives an error message. Love me the power of the internets.
Enjoy post-apocalyptic and singularity science fiction? Check out www.demonarchives.com, a new online graphic-novel.
Moving mass requires energy. The amount of energy required increases in proportion to the mass. Energy used by an airplane is supplied by fuel that costs money. More mass, more fuel, more money. Full stop. This has nothing to do with health, or discrimination, or anything else besides the laws of physics.
You're buying a seat. I can see if you can't fit into it (been next to people like that). It's not like the airlines are packing customers in like freight. You're paying for a SEAT and considering all the other factors in an aircraft, the weight of a passenger is hardly a game changer. The maximum take-off weight of an Airbus 319 is 140,000 lbs. Assuming a generous 200lbs per person, that works out to less than1/5 of the weight being passengers.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
It's then you idiot. You're too stupid to be a grammar nazi.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
When I was a kid I remember my mom paying per pound before boarding a helicopter. She wasn't obese, so it wasn't a slam at her. Planes and helicopters have a limit to what they can lift. If I owned an airline I'd want two 150lb paying passengers than one 300lb passenger.
photosMy Photostream
Actually 2 economy sits cost less than 1 business class (and definitely more than 1 first class)
Everyone knows that economy is the least expensive seat on the plane, we'll represent it as X. Business is the next most expensive, we'll represent it as Y. First class is the most, we'll call it Z. Hopefully, I haven't completely blown your mind yet.
We can then say that X
You stated
2 economy sits cost less than 1 business class
So we can say 2X
You then also said
and definitely more than 1 first class
Which would mean 2X>Z
Hence this means Y>2X>Z, or Y>Z. Except everyone who has ever flown on any plane, ever, knows that Z>Y.
Why is math so hard for you? And why on earth do people pay you to write code when you can't handle simple math? There can't possibly be that many people looking for code that discards logic and substitutes in religious scripture, can there?
Resource Limit Is Reached
The website is temporarily unable to service your request as it exceeded resource limit. Please try again later.
Seems like the excess traffic from /. broke their website
The difference is that issues such as autism are genetic, such that you're born with them, whilst only a minority (despite what some people on the larger side like to pretend) of obesity cases are caused by genuine genetic issues.
In the vast majority of cases obesity is like smoking - a lifestyle choice that can make you unhealthy. Autism, bipolar disorder, are not lifestyle choices.
Most people who are obese can take measures to get rid of obesity, you can't just get rid of autism.
I think if you have a genuine genetic disorder that causes obesity and people know that then they'll have sympathy for you as much as if you were born with downs syndrome or whatever. Don't expect people to have sympathy though if you're obese simply because you have a poor diet and can't be bothered to exercise enough - which again is the case for the vast majority of people who are obese.
Dude, I'm pretty certain he could easily explain it in his native language. You're invited to learn it. No? Oh, "this is an English page, so learn English"? He did. So did I. We bothered to learn your language. Now at least have the courtesy to appreciate that we made it our burden to bridge that language gap just so we could communicate with you.
If it was just for you, I'd say it wasn't worth it. Luckily, there are others, too, that make it all worthwhile.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
What they'll be doing is quite simple. You step on a large scale, with all your luggage next to you. The weight is multiplied by a factor based on distance, and that's your fare. Simple. I like it. I wouldn't mind legacy carriers doing the same.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
English is not my first language either.
Deal with it.
Lots of discussion here about why a 6' tall 200 pound person (who would be technically overweight, definitely not skinny) wouldn't expect to pay as much as a 5' tall 200 pound person (who would definitely be obese).
Planes have a limited amount of lift (and can only lift so much weight), but before you hit that limit you'd hit another bottleneck -- planes have limited numbers of seats. Assuming that you can only fit x people on the plane and that planes will always be full to capacity (they all seem to be these days), and assuming their weight/fare formula guarantees that each extra pound is profitable for the airline, it's the to airline's advantage to carry non-obese people.
If you have 300 seats, you can fill them with the 6' tall 200 pound people, 1 per seat. If you try to fill it with 5' tall 200 pound people, they will take up more than one seat each. You will make less money filling a plane with the obese people than the overweight people who still fit in one seat.
What would be REALLY interesting is if they will also pay employees based on their weight?
I imagine some kind of bonus/surcharge on top of their standard pay rate might be able to work, without it devolving into an unhealthy situation (e.g. bulimia).
I should have used the word 'sit' a few more times, I was wondering who was going to get annoyed about it.
You can't handle the truth.
Awhile back, I noticed a "Sky Tram" ride had a limit of 300 lb per couple. I understand why they did that, but it was still annoying, since at the time, I was over 200, and my GF was certainly well over 100.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
I'm 6'5", and I don't approve this message.
Someone having the guts to shamelessly charge based on a direct factor in costs.
Baggage included too.
I usually drive. I find there's a lot to be said for loading up my camera gear and suitcases in a fine automobile and taking off. There's no baggage limit, I get to eat at nice restaurants, sleep in luxury accommodations, my seating in the car itself is wonderfully comfortable, I control the environment, there are no crying babies or diseased traveling "companions", I get to pick the music, the when and what of mealtimes, I can use my cellphone (or ham/sw radio if I take my own vehicle) simply by pulling over, I get to see the countryside and the cityscapes, I can stop off and visit friends, meet people I've only known online, hit up everything from symphonies to comedy clubs to strip joints, and not once will anyone try to feed me peanuts. :)
I've dug for diamonds in Arkansas, spelunked in Virginia, gone diving off of the Keys, watched a couple of space shuttle launches (and one abort... sometimes you draw the short straw), gone skiing about everywhere you can in the US, entered a couple of martial arts tournaments I randomly came across, marched in several political events, and shot photos of just about anything that would hold still enough for long enough for me to get my gear online. I've been to most major national parks off season and on. When I decide to take a trip, I look forward to it and then I consume it. I have developed business interests on both coasts and live in Montana, so my excuses are legion. :)
The only thing I find slightly annoying is the ratcheting down of speed limits as one gets closer to the coasts. Not that people drive a lot slower, typically, they don't, but I'm not inclined risk my license, so I obey the posted limits. Can be irritating to others on the road. One time I was driving along Rt 6 in NY, near Middletown, with my lady and a friend from the area. I was keeping to the speed limit, which was 50 mph on that winding, hilly road. I was in my own car, so carrying Montana plates. Guy passes me going somewhat faster, yells out the window: "Go back to the grand canyon!" We laughed about that all through dinner.
On occasion, I take an ocean liner or a train. On that very rare instance when someone says "can you be at X by Y" and it doesn't seem doable, I simply tell them, sorry, no.
If your job is so awful that it forces you to fly, well then, you'll be flying. I've simply made it a point to never allow that kind of control to be exerted over me. These days, the "need" to physically be somewhere at a certain time is a lot more limited than it used to be. I can face-to-face interface with just about anyone who can get to a computer, anywhere in the world. I see little reason to insist on smelling people's armpits as well.
Actually, I'm cool with "blowing" my entire vacation driving. I like to drive; I'm good at it, and I make it a point to rent something interesting from time to time. I try to drive a new (to me) route as much as possible. The US is huge and there's more to see than I could ever manage to see. I've done some long haul motorcycling too, but eventually found that to be physically wearing out of proportion to the fun, so no more of that.
Yep. But while you were on there, you had access to power which you could use to keep a laptop, ipad, music player or video player up and running. You could have slept in your chair, or your bunk if you took a sleeper or a full cabin. They'll serve you meals, and you can pay too much for junk food at the concession thing. I'm not saying they couldn't do better,
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
no but you can stump your legs and save money and gain comfort and preferential treatment from the staff. just don't mention that you did it just for flying a little better.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
So... sit happens. Seat mishappens?
You can't handle the truth.
You need to justify the added cost each pound adds to the cost of flying the airplane. I don't think a few pounds will make a huge difference in the fuel cost.
Also any airline doing this kind of thing is going to also have to justify that the airline themselves have done everything possible to minimize the weight of the equipment and content on the plane before passing the buck to heavy customers. I would be outraged if the airline had several thousand pounds of redundant content on an airline (such as empty meal carts or trays, unused cabin accessories, even non-passenger cargo) before passing the buck to me to charge for my added weight to the plane.
I don't care if I am charged by weight, but I'm not going to subsidize the airline running itself inefficiently.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
As with most air transportation, the cargo is actually a rather minimal fraction of the total weight. That the cargo is alive and human in this case means little, the way you get packed in economy you can as well be called freight.
Take your average Boeing 767. Doesn't matter which plane you take, switch out for an Airbus if you feel more European today. Let's make it a sardine bin front to back without any fancy-shmancy first class crap and cram 375 units of human freight in.
Now, let's look at the weight. Empty, this human cargo freighter weighs 229k lbs. Fuel weight of course depends on the distance we plan to travel, but up to 24.1k gallons can be filled. With roughly 7 lbs a gallon, we're looking at up to 168k lbs, let's just say 146k lbs so we get the take off weight of the plane without cargo to 375k lbs.
So, if this plane is at least almost filled up, every single passenger is "weighing" an additional 1000 lbs to his own weight. So, let's compare the difference between a, say 100 lbs person and a 300 lbs person. So, the former comes with 1100 lbs, the latter with 1300 lbs, for "his share" of the plane weight.
In other words, a person three times as heavy as the other one comes down to a weight increase of 15%. And I think it would be quite fair if he paid an extra 15% to account for that.
Not quite what that calculator spat out, though...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If you know Samoans like I know Samoans... you'd find a people who love to laugh. Did they roll this out yesterday? Did nobody notice until today?
Language is merely a code to transport information. If it can be used sufficiently well to accomplish this task, it's enough.
It's something different if someone elevates it to an art form (I sure wouldn't want to read a book riddled with spelling errors, bad grammar and constant reuse of words because the author has the active vocabulary of a three year old), but when used as an information transportation device, what matters is whether the recipient was able to understand the message.
Obviously, as you bothered to correct him, you did.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
well, it's a no brainer if you have the option for a 300km/h line. but for a route like that, it's likely a bus would get you there in half a day anyhow
Clearly you have not seen the traffic in Europe. You cannot generally calculate travel time by taking the distance and dividing by ~100 km/h for motorway speeds like you can in Canada and the US. I knew an American postdoc who planned to drive his family from Cambridge to Hadrian's wall (~200 km) for a day trip because he thought it would just be a 2 hour drive each way - he did not have a good weekend!
A higher population density helps trains more than just by making the lines more economical: it makes driving far less attractive!
About half of all my flights last year I sat next to someone who's belly enveloped the armrest.
Half.
Maybe I'm flying to the wrong places.
But I'm not getting a discount for the < 90% of a seat I'm left to occupy.
Forget the fuel cost of weight... this is justice.
You were correct right up to the point where you equated the differential power it takes to transfer extra bits to the differential fuel it takes to move mass. And that, as they say, it where you fail it.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
So who is going to want to fly anywhere on a plane crawling (literally) with babies and small children? Now that every Samoan can take 10-15 kids for the price of one adult you can be sure I'm never getting on one of their planes.
The reason we subjugate ourselves to law is to better procure justice. If law does not accomplish this purpose then it m
I was especially appalled by the famous London subways (and took a double take when I saw what they wanted from me to ride on it).
I'm not surprised you were shocked if you were trying to ride on something you found in a London subway. Next time I'd suggest you take the London Underground, usually referred to as the tube.
This is a good point, and is why I really support pay-per-byte internet pricing, so long as and only so long as the rates are sensible and connected to cost (as with electricity) rather than punitive (like cellphone overages).
Prices are the way that the economy communicates abundance and scarcity; unmetered internet service encourages people to treat bandwidth as an unlimited resource and consume it as such. Perhaps this is somewhat close to true sometimes (home connections), perhaps it is less true otherwise (4G connections), but if bandwidth isscarce, people's usage patterns need to reflect that, and prices are the signal that makes this happen.
I weigh in at 135 lbs, highly unlikely to carry more than 40 lbs of luggage and I am supposed to subsidize fat people? People who pack heavy? Why is that ok? Oh, because you're fat, got it. It's all good as long as _you_ are ok with it, I guess.
Only I can judge you.
Guess what - obesity is the only thing on that list that is voluntary.
Hawai'i has big commercial airlines that fly between islands and to the mainland, but it also has a (variable) number of small airlines that typically use small 10-12-seat planes. They're often cheaper, and they usually fly out of the commuter/freight terminals instead of the main terminals, so you don't have to wait in the TSA security line or do TSA baggage inspection; the planes are small enough they don't pretend terrorists are going to crash it into buildings, and they don't carry enough fuel to hijack the plane to Cuba. The airline people still have to use a metal-detector wand, but there's none of the abuse, and the person putting your luggage onto the plane is often the pilot.
On the other hand, they do need to know your weight. It doesn't affect the price, but they need to balance the plane properly. So I usually end up sitting in the back with the Samoans and local Hawai'ian guys :-)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Wow, that was really a crock of excrement and clearly demonstrates that you know less than nothing about the subject. NEXT!
Bzzt. Wrong. NEXT!
This coming from the guy who thinks the majority of obesity cases and genetic problems such as autism are equivalent in terms of the person's ability to self-treat.
37.5% of the US population is obese. You realise how utterly absurd it is to try and suggest that's something genetic that's arisen in such a vast proportion of the population in only a couple of generations that science has completely failed to detect? You realise that's a mathematical impossibility right? that you literally couldn't spread a genetic disease to that much of the population in that few generations?
Look I get it, it's not an easy thing to start to deal with, it takes a lot of effort and self-motivation and that can be hard to gather, but that's still not the same as something like autism which there's literally nothing you can physically do to change. The problem is you're in a state of denial that you can even do anything about it, you have this mindset that it's everyone elses fault and there's nothing you can do about it, if you can't even get past that point then it's no surprise you are making absurd claims that it's akin to genetic problems like autism. There are some groups that are genuinely victims of societal changes - native Americans, and Canada's inuit whose bodies aren't evolved to deal with Western food, which has been a cause of obesity and diabetes amongst other things, but even they have the option of changing their diet to one their body can better cope with.
Start by taking a look at yourself and accepting there are things you can do, that's the largest part the battle. Don't just sit there pretending you're one of life's victims though, and it's everyone else's fault for being mean to you, because that's the fastest way to make yourself a victim and ensure you never sort your problem out.
Wrong again. But let's dispense with reality for a moment and pretend that obesity is a result of lifestyle choice. We are supposed to be tolerant of marijuana use even though real medical treatments of those who supposedly need it are readily available. That is a lifestyle choice. We are supposed to be tolerant of people who want to have totally guilt-free, consequence-free sex while demanding that other people pay for it. That is a lifestyle choice and anyone opposing that choice is to be tarred and feathered in the media. We're supposed to be tolerant of radical Islam to the point of spending money to install ritualistic foot baths in public places but try to hang a copy of the Ten Commandments or a picture of Jesus (or try protesting against a teacher who demands that you stomp on the word 'Jesus') and the ACLU has a field day.
My point is that when it comes to obesity, the media and groups like the ACLU are the ones carrying the torches and pitchforks. They aren't calling for billions of dollars be spent on medical research. They aren't demanding that society give them special consideration and understanding. Ultimately, they are hypocrites. They consider themselves more evolved, if you will, for protecting supposedly certain segments of the population yet they are clearly unevolved in their inconsistency.
"We are supposed to be tolerant of marijuana use even though real medical treatments of those who supposedly need it are readily available. That is a lifestyle choice. We are supposed to be tolerant of people who want to have totally guilt-free, consequence-free sex while demanding that other people pay for it. That is a lifestyle choice and anyone opposing that choice is to be tarred and feathered in the media. We're supposed to be tolerant of radical Islam to the point of spending money to install ritualistic foot baths in public places but try to hang a copy of the Ten Commandments or a picture of Jesus (or try protesting against a teacher who demands that you stomp on the word 'Jesus') and the ACLU has a field day."
These examples are so utterly weak, irrelevant to the issue of obesity and largely just outright wrong that I think it only further confirms the fact that you're desperately looking for excuses as to why you feel it's not your problem.
If you spent half as much time thinking up really poor examples of supposed oppressed minorities that you ridiculously believe have more support than obese people as you did realising it's a problem you can do something about then you wouldn't have the problem. Again, you think you're one of life's victims, and you are, because you make yourself one, that ain't the ACLU's fault, it's yours.
Slashdot is only an American site in that it is owned and operated in the US. The topics of the stories and it's userbase are international. Idiot.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
"The website is temporarily unable to service your request as it exceeded resource limit."
Going forward, they should weigh the payloads before accepting so many clients.