Air passengers often complain that the weight allowance for the average traveller is becoming smaller and smaller. All the fees that airlines have added to checked baggage, even carry-on baggage for some airlines, have left passengers wondering if the most equitable thing to do is simply charge by overall weight. One airline has done this.
Samoa Air, a small airline based out of the Pacific island of American Samoa, has done something big. It has become the first airline to charge passengers strictly by weight. The airline has actually been doing so since November 2012, but it did not become news until the airline received approval to fly an international route between American Samoa and Samoa.
Samoa Air sets fares based on the combined weight of passengers and their luggage. One example shows a fare of 93 cents to $1 (€0.68c to €0.73c) for each kilogram. Based on the weight of the average traveller, the final cost is likely to be cheaper than fares on competing airlines. The airline operates flights between Samoa, American Samoa, North Tonga, Niue, North Cook Islands and French Polynesia.
To think about it, this is really an extension of the polluter pays principle: the more you waste, the more you pay. Now it may be time for: the more you weigh, the more you pay.
History has already proved this principle. The most successful measure of cutting down on smoking was when the cost of cigarettes became too expensive. Now it is time that, to weigh much above the average must become too expensive. Let us all be weighed at the Department of Social Security, or wherever, twice a year, and our tax bill monitored by our weight.
The more you indulge, the more you are likely to use of the country’s resources, and the more you ought to be taxed.
One’s social benefit should also be linked to weight. If you are unemployed, how can you be so wealthy to feed yourself and your children to gross overweight?
Factor in the health savings in cutting down on medication, hospital visits, coronary and vascular surgery, insulin, nursing, bed occupancy, and so on. Factor in the needs of the grossly overweight elderly, and the care work involved.
Big people need big cars and smaller people may choose smaller cars and use less fossil fuel.
The imagination rambles on, but dare one be innovative? The Samoans are. Perhaps with a bit of tongue in cheek, we may be too.