People laughed and made jokes a couple of years back when airlines started charging over-obese folks for two seats on airplanes. Less amusing is the news that overall increase in passenger weights is driving up costs for airlines.
Through the 1990s, the average weight of Americans increased by 10 pounds, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The extra weight caused airlines to spend $275 million to burn 350 million more gallons of fuel in 2000 just to carry the additional weight of Americans, the federal agency estimated in a recent issue of the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.
“The obesity epidemic has unexpected consequences beyond direct health effects,” said Dr. Deron Burton of the CDC. “Our goal was to highlight one area that had not been looked at before.”
The extra fuel burned also had an environmental impact, as an estimated 3.8 million extra tons of carbon dioxide were released into the air, according to the study.
I dislike the “obesity epidemic” rhetoric, but it’s still an interesting bit of analysis.