You know those little bins at airline gates that say, “If your carry-on bag doesn’t fit in here it won’t fit in the overhead compartment?” Well, soon, next to it, there will be another, larger container. All prospective passengers will be asked to limbo into it and the sign on the outside says, “If you can’t fit into this container you cannot fit onto this plane.”
All people hoping to board the plane who can’t squeeze into the sample container (which is pretty big actually) will be given information about rental cars, or brochures about train travel or they will be directed to a special new airline that is emerging called Fat Airlines (Fat Air).
The geometry of wide people and narrow little aisles and narrow little seats doesn’t work. Heavy people shouldn’t have to wedge into their seats (it’s like trying to fit too many sheets of paper into an envelope), and average-sized people shouldn’t have to forfeit their armrest and a good amount of their personal space sitting next to a wide body, so you see, Fat Air is a win-win.
Fat Air planes will be like other planes with a few modifications. Of course, they will have half the seats of a normal plane, as the passengers will take up twice the space and net out at twice the weight. The tires will need to more heavy-duty, like the ones you see on earthmovers. The seats won’t recline because the seat technology has not been invented that can withstand the force of hundreds of fat people simultaneously in the reclined position. Certainly, the armrests will need to be reinforced and widened to support chubby limbs and the seatbelts will be superlong (duh) with super-strength buckles.
Have you seen those Frontier Airlines planes that have animals painted on the fuselage? Well, Fat Air will have animals on their’s too, only they will be bigger animals like elephant seals, manatees and hippos.
Once Fat Air passengers are all on board, the oxygen masks will automatically drop down to help them catch their breath after the arduous boarding process. I’d rather not go into detail about the Fat Air bathrooms though, needless to say, they will be about the size of a shipping container and feature the kind of roll-up doors they have at the typical storage unit.
The waitresses on-board will also be overweight so no one feels self-conscious and when it’s time to eat they will go down the aisles and hand each passenger a big spoon and a large tin cup like the ones you use on a camp-out. The in-air snacking done on Fat Air is buffet style and they pass around liters of Pepsi and chocolate milk and other high-calorie drinks. Then the customers can use their big spoons on vats of chili and peanut butter and ice cream that pass them by, right down the aisle, on conveyor belts. Strapped under each seat are bags of Ruffles and Doritos – instead of flotation devices – because, on Fat Air, you shouldn’t have to be hungry during a water landing.
The people at Fat Air say that their approach to air travel is a humane way of solving an increasingly contentious problem. It makes a lot of sense to me and I think the new airline’s motto says it all: Fat Air, Fly Fat & Happy.
Photo on Visual Hunt