Wayne Boatwright > wrote:

>On Wed 16 Jul 2008 03:13:42p, Steve Pope told us...

>> While I see where you are coming from, sometimes the best approach
>> to a situation is to muddle through, and deal with issues as they
>> arise, rather than having a firm policy.

>> From the airlines' perspective, even with no stated policy,
>> most passengers are not too large for most seats; in the cases
>> where they are, often the seat next to them is empty, they can
>> change seats around to arrange this, or they can move them to
>> business/first, or the passenger next to them might not complain.
>> In a tiny fraction of cases, with no policy, they will have to
>> bump the large passenger to the next flight.

>> Whereas if they had a stated policy, either large passengers would
>> end up having to buy two seats, or a business/first seat,
>> ahead of time; or if they aren't required to do so, they'd
>> be entitled to sit in a coach seat. Either scenario has
>> significant disadvntages to the "muddle through it" approach.

>> It boils down to the airlines have good reasons to handle
>> it the way they're handling it now.

>Having had this situation inflicted on me numerous times, I couldn't
>disagree more, Steve. I simply don't want to have to deal with it, and
>often the airline personnel won't. I paid my money...I am fully entitled
>to the entire seat I paid for.

Of course you're entitled to your seat; that should be a given
and any airline I fly has procedures to remove adjacent passengers
when necessary (for this and for various other reasons).

However I think a policy that requires large passengers to
buy two seats or an upgrade would be a huge overreaction.
It doesn't (in my experience) cause enough problems enough
of the time to warrant this. I guess we are differently
experienced on this point.

Steve