Would you lose weight to get a cheaper ticket?

Samoa is a small group of islands situated in the Pacific Ocean, approximately half way between Hawaii and New Zealand. I’ve heard it’s a beautiful place and hopefully one day I’ll be lucky enough to visit it. Following a recent announcement though then maybe it would be worth my while losing a bit of weight before I go there.

Although it’s only a very small country with a population of less than 200,000, the national airline has just launched a unique ticket pricing policy which if any of the major airlines followed would please one group of people but upset another group.

So who would be pleased and who would be unhappy?

Put simply – overweight people would be unhappy.

So what is their pricing policy?

Well, the airline has announced that ticket prices for their flights would be based on the combined weight of the passenger and their luggage. In other more blunt words, the fatter you are the more your flight ticket will cost whilst the slimmer you are the cheaper your ticket will be.

Are Samoa Air leading the way and will other airlines follow?

Arguably this is a fairer way of charging for flights as after all one of the major costs of airlines is fuel and the heavier you are the more fuel will be needed to move you through the air. This is especially true for the small planes that Samoa Air use.

It does also seem unfair when a slim person who has 1 kg of luggage above his or her limit is charged an excess luggage fee when somebody who is 50 kg heavier than them but is within their luggage limit doesn’t suffer an excess luggage fee.

Good luck to the airline with this novel pricing policy and also to their management accountants who will no doubt be monitoring movements in the average waistlines of the population when they are putting together their annual revenue forecasts.