Defenestrating Thoughts from the Bivouac

After I posted this morning, I remembered the buzz a while back about how airlines would start weighing passengers and charge based on their weight. This is something that seems like it would never happen.

My guess is that some “expert” sarcastically said, “Next thing you know, they will charge passengers by weight.” And then the talking heads took the story and ran with it. And kept running.

There’s a huge overhead and headache of weighing all the customers and then charging them. Check-in times would be longer and more staff would be need. Plus, there would be all sorts of privacy concerns and lawyers would have a field day with discrimination lawsuits.

It’s much, much easier to “socialize” it and just spread out the cost across all the passengers. Which is what airlines do today anyway.

If you’re not convinced, think of this: who are the airlines’ most profitable customers? They are the guys in first and business class. And let’s be honest, most of those business guys are pretty big. How do you think they would feel about being weighed at the airport in front of everyone?

Charge for luggage? Sure, the business traveler is annoyed, but not that much; after all, he just expenses it. But you start weighing him, and you just lost a really valuable customer. Unless all the airlines start this at the same time, you’ll see a significant amount of people that go to the airline that doesn’t completely treat them like cattle.