Airlines should be required to have seats that accommodate all body types rather than be permitted to squeeze seats so close that even people of average size cannot sit comfortably. Believe it or not people don't choose to be disabled.
this post was submitted on 23 Nov 2025
43 points (70.5% liked)
Unpopular Opinion
8191 readers
440 users here now
Welcome to the Unpopular Opinion community!
How voting works:
Vote the opposite of the norm.
If you agree that the opinion is unpopular give it an arrow up. If it's something that's widely accepted, give it an arrow down.
Guidelines:
Tag your post, if possible (not required)
- If your post is a "General" unpopular opinion, start the subject with [GENERAL].
- If it is a Lemmy-specific unpopular opinion, start it with [LEMMY].
Rules:
1. NO POLITICS
Politics is everywhere. Let's make this about [general] and [lemmy] - specific topics, and keep politics out of it.
2. Be civil.
Disagreements happen, but that doesn’t provide the right to personally attack others. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Please also refrain from gatekeeping others' opinions.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Shitposts and memes are allowed but...
Only until they prove to be a problem. They can and will be removed at moderator discretion.
5. No trolling.
This shouldn't need an explanation. If your post or comment is made just to get a rise with no real value, it will be removed. You do this too often, you will get a vacation to touch grass, away from this community for 1 or more days. Repeat offenses will result in a perma-ban.
6. Defend your opinion
This is a bit of a mix of rules 4 and 5 to help foster higher quality posts. You are expected to defend your unpopular opinion in the post body. We don't expect a whole manifesto (please, no manifestos), but you should at least provide some details as to why you hold the position you do.
Instance-wide rules always apply. https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Why punish the fat when being stupid is still free everywhere?
Why is people downvoting an actual unpopular opinion? I meant, you might have your opinion on the subject but the post itself is on point.
Because they're offended 😂
fat*
Lol exactly - in reality
If you're thinking of this, consider that those who buy clothes in XS have to pay the same amount as the XXL size for that same shirt or pants. Despite the XS garment being a third as much material and stitching.
That only works for some clothing. Usually by the time you get to XL the arms or legs aren't proportionately wider, only the body, so the sizing often doesn't really work. If it's numbered sizes, above the regular range there usually is a premium price for + sizes, same as for petite.
The extra material and stitching you are talking about costs less than a US penny for any manufacturing process.
Why not both? Bigger seats and weight-based ticket prices!
The ticket should come with a total weight of the passenger and their luggage. If I’m skinny let me bring 70kg bags.
No.
Airlines should be regulated so the seats are larger and accommodate larger people.
And if you managed to fly before airlines were deregulated, then you know that this was once the norm and isn't too much to ask.
You do know that tickets for those nice spacious old timey flights you're dreaming of were upwards of thousands of dollars, adjusted for inflation, even for the cheapest seat on a domestic flight.
And did you also know that those old timey flights included check through baggage, actual food, rules regarding getting passengers to their destinations and a host of other amenities and important regulations that were thrown in the trash because we trusted corporations to NOT create a plane that requires you to stand up for an entire flight (an actual concept that was considered). And you know how when you search for a flight a few times, the price keeps going up? Conspicuously lacking back then along with paying extra for a seat with a window only to be told an actual window isn't guaranteed. Yeah, there was no Internet, but it's still true.
There was also far fewer planes, far fewer pilots, far fewer airports (infrastructure in general), and far less advanced technology. Prices fell way before they started cramping seats.
You're just reinforcing my point here.
That's why airlines need to be regulated. It should be illegal to draw a profit while giving zero value.
The value is being transported from point a to b. How anyone with a straight face can argue that low leg toom is an airline providing "zero value" is a fucking mystery to me. Like do you buy plane tickets for the sole purpose of sitting comfortably in a flying tube for shits and giggles, with no regard to destination or origin ?
And also, THEY ALREADY DON'T. The profit margins on the completely basic, zero extras or add ons econeomy seat are ALREADY close to 0 for most airlines. Negative for some.
Right so, really the airlines should calculate the volume of a person and allocate a box of that size. When you get to your box, you have to fold yourself into it. If anything hangs out, maybe cut it off or just smash it in violently. Screw the bathrooms, just hold it or piss on yourself. Air conditioning and heating? Unnecessary. Think of the weight savings if the boxes were packed in like cargo. You wouldn't need seatbelts. Maybe then those poor airlines that are barely eeking out a profit, might make money. We don't need any amenities. I mean, did you get there?
Oh and if the airlines aren't making money then that just proves that deregulation doesn't work. They were the ones that lobbied for it.
The value is being transported from point a to b.
If you flew in the 80's or 90's, then you know how significantly de-regulation has affected the value of the product.
Frankly, you're wrong, but you have a right to be. The problem here isn't fat people, it's rich people wanting to extract more money from passengers while offering nothing of value in return.
Have a great day.
Lemmy is extremely anticapitalist and still disagrees with you, does that not give you pause?
Not at all.
Our culture hates fat people and thinks being fat is a moral failing. This doesn't surprise me at all, and it likely hasn't even crossed most people's minds to blame billionaire capitalists instead of fat people.
Nothing in this thread is about fatphobia. Literally nothing.
It's simply about the fact that society can't bend around every body type in existence. And yes, that sucks unbelievably much for people who ARE untypical bodytypes, and yes it's enormously unfair but it's more or less the best for a shit situation.
It's unreasonable and impossible to expect everything in every circumstance, to be accommodating to every possible body type , at least not without having having a massive number of seats on every transport empty, because they're reserved for people of unusual bodytypes, who are rare and therefore rarely use them. That would make prices higher for everyone, it would require more planes and busses an trains to be built and moved to accomodate the much lower number of effectively usable seats, which will lead to even higher costs, the networks will grid lock under the increased traffic, and the environment will suffer from all the extra airplanes that are now transporting far fewer pax per flight than before.
You can't just blame the boogeyman for all your problems
Airplane manufacturers and airlines should stop maximizing throughput via smaller seats.
Actually, I prefer the tight packing. I wanna get from A to B, and have you seen how expensive tickets are?
They should really be using wide body flying/blended wings so the cabin is more spacious for the same max payload, but that’s a separate matter.
That being said, I think airlines should mix in a few spacier seats, for big/tall people, for a small, markup, and exclude all the business class extras.
Airlines already do this, premium economy. Usually the seats that happen to have more leg room due to the design of the cabin.
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
There's already a solution for that. It's called premium economy/business class.
And if you're gonna say "but that's so much more expensive", well guess what's going to happen if you reduce how many pax can fit on an aircraft.
Folks should not down vote him, the cost of flights considering inflation have dropped a ton over the years. Its comodetized and made highly efficient with cramped quarters and more efficient technology. If you want more room to fly old school it simply costs more...
https://www.travelandleisure.com/airlines-airports/history-of-flight-costs
"In 1970, a domestic round-trip flight from New York to Los Angeles cost about $150, which is equivalent to over $1,000 today when adjusted for inflation, while today the same flight averages around $300. "
load more comments
(6 replies)
I'm not sure this is unpopular, even on Lemmy.
Someone else already said that they should stop making the seats tiny.
I feel like this is a fairly common opinion. Also, I believe they do have to after some point; not sure how the airline decides though?
Exactly.
And if you're someone who has lost a lot of weight, and lived in the world of a fat person and an average-sized person, you know that very well.
load more comments
(9 replies)
I'm tall and don't fit in any seat other than an exit row. If there aren't any exit rows should I be forced to pay for the seat in front of me?
I'm sorry you have to deal with that but it's not really a good argument. For one, the airline can still actually sell the seat in front of you.
If a person is so large they physically block 2 seats, then that's an extra seat that can't be occupied at all, so it's not really a fair comparison.
And ultimately, not every mode of transport can reasonably be accommodating to every single possible body type. I know that it sucks for people are stuck being an untypical body type and have to deal with nothing much fitting them,, but what do you suggest the alternative should be ? Spacing seats out more just so the few very tall people can sit everywhere is going to increase ticket prices for everyone, even those who neither need nor want that extra space. It will also increase the number of flights required to move the same number of passengers, and therefore increase the fuel use per passenger and mile flown.
Yeah dude, corporations should be able to do whatever the fuck they want!
/s
load more comments
(1 replies)
Really covering new ground with this one...
view more: next ›