I will give no citations for these numbers since I just calculated them myself, so, you should proba

Hello disagreeables. As you may (or may not have) noticed, I ve been away from the blogging machine for a little while. Turns out, work, traveling, sports competitions, moving, atlantis hotel casino and general life got in the way of angrily smashing keys on my keyboard for a few weeks. A more committed blogster would have faithfully trudged through the quagmire, but alas, I am not one. Fear not! I am back and speaking in old english for some reason.
atlantis hotel casino I ll try to keep this as brief and relevant as possible, since (1) aircraft performance analysis comes with TONS of assumptions, atlantis hotel casino (2) the results are typically non-generalizable, and (3) answering a question such as what are the implications of a weight-based fee structure on airline operations, profits, and society? involves a few PhD dissertations.
I will give no citations for these numbers since I just calculated them myself, so, you should probably not cite these in your upcoming dissertation. With 150 passengers and their junk onboard (assuming 200lbs/pax or 91kg/pax) you re carrying about 12,100kg of people and stuff. Assuming about .82 kg/L for JET-A fuel, you get 14,756 liters of fuel, or about 3,900 gallons. Assuming about $3/gal (it s actually a bit lower than that right now), you end up with a total fuel cost for the flight of $11,700. With 150 passengers on the flight that s about 26 gallons per person, or $78 per person.
The tricky part about this problem (and the thing that makes it fun for PhD type research) is that the fuel per passenger depends on how you consider those passengers. An example: assume atlantis hotel casino (stupidly) that the flight will be canceled if there are less than 150 pax, and it will fly if there are 150 or more. So basically, the fuel cost to fly the first 150 pax is sunk. Extra passengers on top just pays for their extra fuel since the flight was going with 150 already anyway. Turns out the 151th person only costs about 6.6 gallons extra in fuel, or about $20. Why? Because because atlantis hotel casino defined this way, the first group of passengers are paying for the fuel burn required to move the empty weight of the aircraft. Once you sink that cost, the next passengers just pay for their difference. Turns out it takes a lot of fuel to fly the empty weight (41,000kg) across the country.
If we ignore all of the complicated things, and just assume that the cost is split evenly and perfectly across all customers, the result is $78/pax. Since each pax is 200lbs, that s $0.40/lb, so if you weighed 100lbs more it would be about $40.
But, as I mentioned, this is kind of a stupid metric. The fixed metric value ($0.40/lb) depends on the fuel burn to fly a fixed number of passengers a fixed distance using fixed assumptions and then divides that fuel burn amongst all passengers equally. And THEN we come back and make some invalid claim like well, transporting 100 pounds costs $40, and then our adviser kicks us in the baby maker.
Really,  if any of those assumptions change, the metric changes. Thus, paying your actual worth in dollar per pound is highly iterative, and it depends immensely on the initial conditions of the problem.
In the academic world I m sure there would be some incredibly interesting and computationally intense network/pricing model. In practice, atlantis hotel casino they d probably just assume a $/lb based on some assumptions (see above) and change it once in a while.
Social norms notwithstanding, fuel prices are a huge portion of airline operating costs. While airline revenues are driven by insanely smart market segmentation techniques (revenue management) rather atlantis hotel casino than simply reflecting the actual physical atlantis hotel casino cost to transport a person, high fuel prices have been driving some interesting changes in the industry.  Airline profits are razor thin (or negative) and airlines have been getting creative with baggage and other fees in order to find any edge they can. I can t really envision a high fuel scenario where an airline throws caution to the wind and installs some scales on the check-in lane, but, one never knows.
Hey! I m glad you wrote about this, and it definitely has been an interesting conversation on twitter. I m also glad that you dug into the numbers some, because it makes it a bit more concrete, which is nice.
One of the points that I made from the get-go, however, is that fuel cost isn t the ONLY reason to scale ticket price by pound. atlantis hotel casino It s interesting to note that fuel-per-person decreases as function of total people, making it a complex metric to generalize about. However, there are a few other factors to consider as well.
1) Weight is also correlated (not perfectly, atlantis hotel casino but correlated nonetheless) with the amount of space a person takes up, which materially atlantis hotel casino impacts the user experience of the person(s) sitting next to that person. Although you are assigned one seat, you do not take up the SAME VOLUME OF SPACE as a person who is 100 pounds lighter. That s a fact that cannot change, no matter how daintily you hold yourself during atlantis hotel casino flight.
2) Moreover, I think it actually would be much more reasonable atlantis hotel casino to give heavier people atlantis hotel casino more food on flights. I eat a full meal every two hours, and flights are always a pain because I literally have to pack and entire meal in my carry-on or be miserable in any flight atlantis hotel casino that s more than 90 minutes or so. Personally, I would LOVE to pay per pound for a plane ticket, if services like snacks and meals also scaled with the ticket price!
3) Finally, I dislike the emotional argument about how it makes people who are overweight feel bad to be charged more. No, I m sorry, you are wrong. If paying more for a plane ticket based on your weight makes you feel bad it s only because you already feel bad about your own weight. If you were proud of weighing more, then you would be proud to pay more. The airline wouldn t be making you feel anything the only thing that s happening is your conflicted feelings about your own weight are being brought to the surface. And I don t feel sorry for people about that.
Realistically, of course, I know that there s no path from point A (our current world) to point B (my ideal world where people pay per pound). But the no-state-transition argument is not a rational argument against atlantis hotel casino the system itself it s just a rational argument against actually going out and trying to do something about it.
Good comments greg. I basically agree with you (especially on point 2!!). The thing that makes the emotional topic a bit easier to deal with is that in this scenario you would presumably be weighing passengers with their bags. So, a 100lb girl with 100lbs of luggage (not unreasonable based on my experiences .) would pay the same as a 200lb person.