No, Air France Isn't Targeting Obese Passengers
The debate over overweight passengers—always at risk of growing heated—just took a turn for the absurd. Some time last week, British media outlets started reporting that Air France was changing their policy on obese flyers, and that the airline would begin forcing overweight customers to purchase a second seat. The reports were picked up by international wire services, while local British media and humor sites had a field day. The interesting thing is that, while Air France is indeed making minor tweaks to their policy, the British writeups were the exact opposite of true.
The old Air France policy, which they've had in place since 2005, allowed overweight passengers to purchase an adjoining economy class seat "for their comfort" at 75 cents on the dollar. In recent years the airline has gotten some grumbles from customers who took them up on the offer, only to discover that their flights were half-filled. Those customers, confident that they could have navigated their way to an empty adjoining seat for free, obviously felt burned. So Air France created this new policy, set to go into effect on February 1, where they give refunds to customers who bought extra seats on flights that ended up below capacity.
That's the extent of the changes: if the cabin doesn't fill up, obese flyers who gambled and purchased a second seat per the old policy get their money back under the policy. See what we mean about the British media getting the story exactly backward?
Now there is some wiggle room on how mistaken the reports were, since Air France allows pilots to refuse boarding to obese passengers who can't fit in their seats. But that's nothing new and, as a technical matter, all airlines give their pilots wide discretion on "safety" issues. But at least the British travel journalists weren't also insufferably snarky while being wrong, as if they would have had any right to gloat in the first place.
[Photo: Philippe Noret / Wiki Commons]
Related Stories:
· Air France clarifies policy for obese passengers [Cheapflights.co.uk]
· Air France [Jaunted]
· Overweight Passengers [Jaunted]
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