Americans Are Now So Heavy That Airlines Are Being Forced To Remove Seats To Make Room For Them

NY Post - United Airlines’ flights are shaping up to most comfortable coach seating in awhile.

Between this month and April 30 of next year, the airline will block off up to six seats on its fleet of Boeing 757s, a company spokesperson told the “Live and Let’s Fly” blog.

The decision was based on numbers gathered from the Federal Aviation Administration that indicated the average winter weight of female passengers — including their carry-on items — increased from 150 pounds in 2019 to 184 pounds in 2022.

Meanwhile, the average male passenger’s winter weight went up, from 190 pounds to 205 pounds, over the same time frame.

“The temporary change is a result of the increased average customer winter weights as prescribed by the FAA,” a United spokesperson said of the temporary change.

“To be compliant with the current B757 weight and balance requirements, United will block specific seats between November 1 and April, 30 2023,” it ended.

Blocked-off spots will always be middle seats in rows 16 to 40 to equally distribute passengers’ weight on every flight, an official told the blog. A laminated sign will be placed on each seat that is off-limits.

Laugh out loud at the "winter weight" asterisk. 

Sure thing guys. Wink, wink.

This is finally a big win for the skinny and healthy people out there. And we owe it all to the fats. 

There's not a lot of things worse than paying through the nose, full price, for a seat on a plane, and being fuckin squeezed to death by a fat person next to you, or even worse, in the middle of two fat people, for your 3 hour flight. It's like death by boa constrictor. 

Touching strangers is weird, and when you have no other choice but to rub arms, shoulders, and thighs with them, AND PAY an airline to do it, it's insult to injury. It's high time airlines stopped penalizing these people and started taking it in the ass themselves, or passing the costs down to the people making other people's experience uncomfortable. 

I don't know if you've been on a flight on the Bermuda Triangle of Obesity lately - Chicago, Cleveland, and Milwaukee. But any one of those routes on any airline you can tell from a mile away. No matter which of those city's airports you are in, you don't even have to check the gate's screen to see where the flight is going to, you just have to look around at the people flopped out at the gate and you know. There are usually 12-20 wheelchairs, wheeling people who can't walk 20 yards without going into cardiac arrest, and it smells like a McDonald's because everyone has a to-go bag to tide them over on the flight because God forbid they go 2 hours without grazing on processed food.  

United can chalk it up to "winter weights" increasing all they want, but we all know those seats are never coming back. Sayonara middle seats. It was nice knowing you. 

p.s. - flew through Europe twice last month, connected in Zurich, Munich, Florence, and Rome. You don't see wheelchairs anywhere there. If by chance you do, it's wheeling a 100-year-old frail person on oxygen, 

not Billy Bob.