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Matt Weiland: Through 50 States With 50 Writers

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Love Herring in Sweden

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Travel Headline of the Day: ‘Airlines May Start Treating Passengers as ‘Freight’’

So, like, they’ll calculate charges for an entire family based on the total weight of everyone? That’s more incentive for reducing weight...Are these Airlines trying to shut down Atkins?

I am overweight so with weight based fare I would pay a higher fare than average.  However since it costs more to haul me, and my chub takes more than its allocation of room on the flight it only seems fair.  However, I would only be equitible to charge for the weight of hand and checked baggage too.

It’s all about supply and demand, and absolutely nothing else.

If you split travelers into two groups, low weight and high weight, then you could have some sort of price discrimination between the two, and that would depend on how elastic the demand is as well as the costs to transport each group.  I am guessing that high weight people have more elasticity of demand than those in the low weight group.  So after adjusting for fuel costs, airlines will need to keep prices low for the high weight group and therefore in the end the price for both low and high groups will probably be around the same.  As a result no price discrimination is necessary.

Unless you think that airlines can make more money by creating a form of price discrimination between overweight individuals and non-overweight individuals.  (And there’s also legal issues and PR issues.)

Sounds like it is time to start traveling by train.  I think people are tired of being nickel and dime to death, I know I am.  If their prices go up, increase fares just like they always did. These cheap tricks like charging for baggage and by weight are too much. I never thought that I would say this, but I think it is time to re-regulate the airlines and treat them like a utility. Flat fees approved by a regulatory board that ensures a fair price and profit, and managed routes may be the only way to go in a future of ever increasing fuel costs.

in my country, indonesia.. the growth of airline passanger was higher and higher. till the oil price sky rocketing.. they change to train to travel

Scooter sales increased as people avoid using cars as much as possible , online sales increased so is the impact on Airlines. The best alternative is of course train for long distance. Freight may benefit passenger as more oil increase means loose of weight automatically…