Elegant Turns of Phrase, Episode 1

During the Obama transition period, David Brooks, commenting on their active recruiting of talent, observed that they had a "traffic jam of brains."

Airfares by the Pound???

15 April 2009--Heard on NPR today that United Airlines has announced that it will begin charging passengers for two seats if they are "too obese" to fit into a "standard" coach seat without overhanging.

In light of escalating fuel costs, it does make a kind of cold capitalist sense to try to establish a more precise linkage between fares collected and loads carried. But it raises some speculations for me.....

• Will there now be a "sample coach seat" at the airport check-in counter which passengers must sit in, and fit in, to the satisfaction of the counter clerk, in the same way that Southwest has a box at their check-in counters into which your carry-ons must fit?
• Will United cheat down the size of that sample seat by 5% to 10%, to push more passengers over the threshold?
• If it goes to the full reducto ad absurdum and airfares are based on a price-per-pound of bodyweight, will passengers engage in the same kinds of pre-check-in self-torture that wrestlers use to weigh-in to a weight class lower than their true one--heavy exercise, restricted diet, diuretics, etc, etc?
• Could a weight-credit system evolve, analogous to carbon-credits among industrial polluters? Could anorexics and bulimics make $$ selling credits for the pounds by which they are sub-normal?
  
• Will the less affluent take to flying in bikinis and thongs?
• Would significant numbers of air passengers be motivated to permanent weight-loss, resulting in a public health benefit?
• Would corporations limit consideration to jockey-sized candidates for those positions requiring frequent travel?
• Could late-boarding and standby passengers be barred from a flight if they would push it over a total-passenger-weight quota?
• Would I really be safe flying on an airline that calculated its fuel capacity that closely?
• Might this be adopted by rail lines, bus companies--even the CTA?
• What about movie theaters? Have to invent a different rationale, I suppose....
• What about the green-diamond lane?
  

There are probably other questions here.


sic transit in gloria mundi.....