Just to be clear, I am in full agreement with the op that the behaviour of the person sitting beside her was wrong. She was totally inconsiderate of the people sharing the row with her and there is no excuse for that.
But, try as people may to excuse away obesity as an addiction, this is about what happens when someone who can't fit in a seat tries to do so next to you. I haven't heard one good argument why this sort of behavior should be permitted.
Just a lot of smoke and mirrors deflecting the point.
[emphasis added by me]
Explanations are not the same as excuses. I've not made any excuses for people but only explanations as something to consider.
Fat lady taking up more than what she paid for on the plane? I've said all along that was wrong. However, smug judgements are also wrong. We simply do not know what was going on in that woman's life. She may have been an insensitive, self-entitled slob with no concern for anyone around her. Or, she may have been pathologically shy, abused from childhood, with a damaged psyche, poor education, low IQ and who self-medicated with food and video games. None of us knows and therefore have no right to label her.
Whatever, she needed two seats, should have bought two seats and maybe it never occured to her that she could actually buy two seats. Sometimes the obvious isn't obvious to the individual and we have all fallen into that at some point.
O
h, I could have had a V-8. Maybe by buying the exit row seat, she thought she was buying an upgrade to a larger seat. That is the airline's mistake for not informing her. It is the airline's mistake for not following its own policy (assuming here it had one as most airlines do). As I've said before, it is a safety issue not just a public relations or comfort issue.
All of us need to take responsibility for our own actions and I believe we also have a responsibility to help other people as well. It doesn't hurt us to be kind. That fat-woman-on-the-plane affects me almost as much as my own fat affects me. The $$$$ obesity is causing this nation is staggering. We
all pay for it.
I don't think the airlines need to make larger seats just because the population is large. The population needs to shed its excess poundage. The more we accomodate fat, the more normal it seems. The ever larger food portion sizes now seem average. When did a small soft drink become 20 ounces?! When did a hamburger go from 3 ounces to a half pound?!
To me, the answer, as painful or embarrasing as it may be, is to charge people for two seats. As I mentioned before, SWA will reimburse for the second seat if the flight is not full. If we have to pay for our fat upfront, maybe we will be more likely to face it and do something about it. Then we won't have to pay so much for the effects of fat after the fact such as disease caused directly from it.
