As part of an overall effort to save fuel and increase efficiency, airlines are replacing bathroom seats with lighter models. Just kidding, we meant passenger seats. But the first one isn't that far out of the bounds of reason either. [NYT]
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All this effort, and all it takes is one extra lardass from Nashville to make it all for not. Price by weight already.
Sloppy editing - they are replacing passenger seats, not bathroom seats
What suprises me is how many TVs are still flying around with big tube TVs for the entertainment system. Thats a good 40 lbs of lard per screen x 10+ screens, or two passangers worth of fuel!
Northwest has studied everything from providing customers with packing tips to serving soda from two-liter plastic bottles rather than individual cans. But it decided that customers would balk at that idea."They like the can," Mr. McGraw said. "They want the can."
Wait, Northwest actually listened to their customers?
I thought they were just using glued bottles of hand sanitizer now, not bathrooms.
Bathrooms are SO 2002.
@Rozelle's Bagman: All for naught.
Charging by weight, in addition to being rude, lawsuit-baiting, and a public relations disaster, wouldn't stick around that long, because airplanes are filled by the seat, not by the pound. Airlines would get attached to the money they made off of larger people and continually up the base rate to make sure they weren't losing money on skinnies.
If they didn't offer such disgusting "food" I'd imagine less people would use the bathrooms.
cmdrsass: Try reading the actual front page blurb before spouting off.
@Kajj: As much as no one would like to admit it, people are freight when it comes to flying. The more weight, the more fuel used. Simple mathematics. Easiest way to accomplish it would be to have someone stand on a scale and the ticket prints out based on weight, without the weight listed. The passenger would have the option of seeing the weight recorded if they felt it necessary. Hell, if we weren't the fattest nation in the history of the planet, everyone could fly cheap!
Airlines obviously did replace the bathroom fixtures (from stainless steel to composite) some years ago.
This is the difference between (loss-making) US airlines and (profitable) anywhere-else airlines.
They - the profitable ones - have rolled over their fleets, replacing gas-guzzlers with fuel efficient aircraft, they've trimmed their organisations, optimised their workflows and they did all this during times of high profitability when there wasn't a pressing need to to do so.
Do they now have a low cost base, deliver efficient networks, low debt, good credit ratings (which means cheaper financing) and are better equipped to weather the present storms?
Of course they do/are!
So, passengers, please, squat over the poop-hole and hope you don't fall backwards.
Fuel's expensive, bitches.