Is it possible? I mean, do airlines really have size limitations or will they try to squeeze anyone onto the flight, just to make a few dollars - even at the expense of other passengers?

These are questions I am asked frequently and the answer is YES, there is such a thing as too fat to fly and contrary to popular belief, it has absolutely nothing to do with the size of the seat!

Typically when a “passenger of size” arrives at the airport, the first airline employee they encounter will normally asses the situation to determine if there is going to be a problem.

If it is a ticket counter agent, the agent will ask if the passenger has flown before. If the answer is in the affirmative, the agent will normally say, “As you know seats today are getting smaller and smaller and we are all getting a little bigger. As a result, it will take more than one seat to accommodate you.” This is when the agent waits for a reaction.

What this means is the person will need two seats and airlines will charge accordingly. For some airlines, the policy reads if the flight is less than a certain percentage full, the passenger may be allowed to travel without being charged for two tickets. Nothing will aggravate a passenger more than to be charged for two seats on a non stop flight from Cincinnati to Orlando and then to see only 43 passengers are aboard the aircraft which can hold 156 passengers!

These days however, most flights are full meaning more and more passengers are being told they will be required to buy more than one ticket. It makes headlines and causes more than one passenger to scream about suing the airline, but it is the policy and more and more passengers are being forced to fork over additional money in order to travel with some degree of comfort.

So when do we reach the point when a person is told they cannot fly? When are passengers too big to fly? When are they told no and who has the responsibility to do so?

The flight attendant is the one and the time it occurs is when the seat belt extension (used for those who cannot fit into the seat belt for one seat) is not enough to accommodate the passenger. When the passenger cannot be secured into the seat, it then becomes a matter of safety and the Federal Aviation Administration will not allow a passenger to be transported on any commercial flight unless they can be secured in the cabin. Period.

I say the flight attendant, but what normally happens is once the flight attendant sees the seat belt extension won’t work and that “oh, crap!” moment occurs they immediately call for the gate agent to come aboard the flight, so they can explain to the frustrated (and now increasingly aware) passenger that they cannot fly on the flight that they just paid 200% for. They were embarrassed at the ticket counter and now, in the ultimate fulfillment of Murphy’s Law, the poor passenger gets a second dose of humiliation aboard the flight and is paraded down the aisle and out the exit…back into the terminal. It’s a cruel journey but one that more and more passengers are taking as we grow increasingly larger as a society.

This is what took place recently when a woman died in Hungary, after several airlines told her she was too large to fly. The headline that a woman was left in a foreign country and later died due to kidney failure was incredibly sad, but it had nothing to do with airlines being too mean or insensitive to accommodate her, it was simply the seat belt extension would not fit around her 425 pound frame and the seats within those specific aircraft could not accommodate a passenger of her size.

There are planes which can be used by larger passengers, but those are few and far between. From what I am reading the airlines involved did everything they could (at that time) to assist the woman in Hungary, but were unable to do so successfully with the airplanes they were operating at the time.

She was able to fly to Hungary without any issues, but her illness caused her to gain weight and that is when the problem escalated to the point she was unable to travel home.

While lawsuits will more than likely be filed, the sad reality is the woman died before she could get home to be treated by her doctors in New York.