Fat fliers DO pay more on this airline

Samoa Air will begin to charge passengers by the kilo. Picture: Samoa Air / Facebook

SAMOA Airlines has started to charge passengers by the kilo, rather than per seat.

No, this is not an overdue April Fool's Day joke. It is real.

Samoa Air  started operating in the Pacific last year. Chief Executive Chris Langton said paying per kilo is the fairest way.  

What do you think? Is pay per kilo the fairest way to fly? Tell us below.

"People have always travelled on the basis of their seat but as many airline operators know airlines don't run on seats they run on weight and particularly the smaller the aircraft you are in the less variance you can accept in terms of the difference in weight between passengers," Mr Langton told ABC radio. 

"There is no doubt in my mind that this is the concept of the future. We always weigh the mass that is on an aircraft. And that always has to pay for the transportation, it doesn't matter whether you are carrying freight or people.  Anyone who travels at times has felt they have been paying for half of the passenger next to them. The standard width and pitch of the seat are changing as people are getting a bit bigger wider and taller than they were 40-50 years ago."

Under the pay by weight system passengers input their weight into the online booking section of the Samoa Air website and pay the "pay-per-kilo" rate for that sector.  

The rates range from $1 a kilogram – for the weight of the traveller and their baggage – on the airline's shortest domestic route to about $4.16 per kilogram for travel from Samoa to American Samoa.

Mr Langton told the ABC he believed many passengers would be pleasantly surprised by the cost of pay by weight.  

"We have worked out a figure per kilo. This is the fairest way of you travelling with your family or yourself. You can put your baggage on, there is no separate fees because of excess baggage - it's just a kilo is a kilo is a kilo. 

"The people that have been most pleasantly surprised are families because we don't charge on the seat requirement, even though a child is required to have a seat - we just weigh them. So a family of maybe two adults and a couple of mid-sized kids and younger children can travel at considerable less than what they were being charged before." 

Last week Norwegain academic Dr Bharat P Bhatta called for 'pay as you weigh' flights so airlines can recoup the cost of the extra fuel required to carry larger people.

"I think the simplest way to implement this would be for passengers to declare their weight when buying a plane ticket," Dr Bhatta Sogn og Fjordane University College told London’s Daily Telegraph. "This would save time and eliminate expense.

"At the airport airlines could randomly select passengers and if they lied about their weight they would have to pay the fat fare and a penalty."

Dr Bhatta said charging according to weight and space was a universally accepted principle, not only in transportation, but also in other services

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Airline shocker: Kids' clothes or wheelchair?

"An expression of love she had waited 20 years to experience"... Sarah Paywee and her friend and supporter Michelle Mattys. Source: news.com.au

• Sarah thought her kids had been murdered
• After 20 years, finally a reunion with them
• But made to choose between her wheelchair..
• Or clothes for her impoverished family

IT was the reunion she had dreamed of for 20 years. Sarah Paywee, who was separated from her children and grandchildren in the African nation of Liberia two decades earlier, was finally returning to the war-torn country.

Ms Paywee fled to Australia after her husband was murdered by assailants and she was violently assaulted. She believed her children had been killed during the war, but later discovered that they had survived.

She was determined to save the money to one day return to her family, who live in one of the poorest countries in the world, and wanted to bring gifts of clothing they desperately needed.

Instead Ms Paywee, who can barely walk without her wheelchair, was left in tears at Perth International Airport earlier this month after she was allegedly forced to discard her gifts at a Thai Airways check-in. The clerk allegedly told her the wheelchair exceeded her baggage allowance.

Ms Paywee was flying to Bangkok with Thai Airways, and then from Bangkok to Liberia with Kenya Airways. The Thai Airways check-in clerk told Ms Paywee that under Kenya Airways rules, passengers were only permitted a baggage allowance of 40kg and if a passenger did not appear confined to their wheelchair it counted as part of their baggage allowance.

Ms Paywee had to make the choice - to leave the goods for her family behind and take her wheelchair because she could not afford the $700 excess baggage fee.

"This unfair policy robbed her of the long overdue joy as a mother of presenting gifts to her children, an expression of love she had waited 20 years to experience," her friend Michelle Mattys, who has helped Ms Paywee adjust to life in Australia, told news.com.au. "These people have nothing."

Ms Mattys is demanding an apology for Ms Paywee and wants a piece of luggage sent to Liberia free of charge.

Ms Paywee has been confined to a wheelchair for three years after she had a stroke, followed by a bad fall. She can only take a couple of steps unassisted.

Ms Paywee was in tears when she was told the news.

Disability Discrimination Commissioner Graeme Innes said the airlines' rules were unacceptable.

"If I was taking a wheelchair over for my mate who used one (so I didn't have any use for it) then that would be a reasonable position," he said.

"But if this is the person's mobility aid that would be like saying to me (as I am blind) because you're using your white cane we'll take that into account for your baggage.”

Domestic and international airlines provide an unacceptably low level of service to disabled people, Mr Innes said.

He said the Federal Government needed to act in regulating the airliner. The area has not had enough attention from the Government since Bill Shorten was the parliamentary secretary for disability, he said.

The Human Rights Commission has received a complaint about the incident, and Thai Airways has launched an investigation into all aspects of the matter.

Kenya Airways did not comment beyond clarifying its wheelchair baggage policy.

Should wheelchairs be part of baggage allowance? Leave a comment below

Email Daniel Piotrowski or tweet him @drpiotrowski

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