First Airline Charging Fliers By Weight

By Author: Steve Robinson
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Cheap airplane tickets and cheap vacation packages could be impacted in the future depending on the weight of the flier. Samoa Air, which flies turboprops between the Samoan islands, started charging its passengers by their weight in January of this year.

The airline has found that families particularly like its new policy because the airline is not charging per seat, just weighing the entire family. A family consisting of two adults with two mid-sized kids is able to travel at considerably less than what they were being charged before when prices were based on the number of seats sold.

Samoa Air’s prices vary depending on the distance flown. Prices range from $1 per kilogram on the airline’s shortest domestic route to as much as $4.16 per kilogram for travel between Samoa and American Samoa. One kilogram equals approximately 2.2 pounds.

Passengers’ weights are verified on scales at the airport to confirm that the weights provided when the tickets were purchased online are accurate.

Samoa is experiencing a serious obesity problem and is often included in the top 10 countries suffering from ...
... the highest levels of obesity.

Samoa Air hopes its new airline policy “has raised the awareness of weight” in Samoa. It contends that charging by weight also helps address safety concerns for the company’s small Britten and Cessna planes.

The airline’s position is that “Airlines don’t run on seats, they run on weight. The smaller the aircraft you’re in, the less variance you can accept in terms of differences in weights between passengers.”
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