Overweight people should be made to pay their fair share on ‘planes.

"Thanks for your persistence, I would have thought you would have accepted the unassailable nature of my arguments and conceded the debate long before now!" You should vote CON just because of how much of an egotistical jerk my opponent is being. But let's go on, anyway. "But the airline does know exactly how much fuel is required for each flight. That's why you have to pre-book freight and advise them the exact weight of the cargo – so they can calculate how much fuel to put in." Obviously they don't know how much fuel is needed, since they don't ask for your weight. And I just took a flight a few months ago. There was no questioning about the weight of my luggage, and I paid the same rate as everyone else. I'm also taking a flight at the end of May. They're not concerned about how much my luggage weighs. "True, but the airlines calculate the fares on a "cost plus" basis, and the cost of fuel is a significant (27%) factor in that calculation. Since it costs them more in fuel to transport 400lbs of flesh and luggage than it does 200lbs of flesh and luggage, shouldn't this be reflected in the fare paid? After all, you'd expect to pay more to send 400lbs of cargo than 200lbs." But we're not paying more to send 400 lbs of cargo than 200 lbs. There's an extra fee for extra bags, but in my experience, they have never cared about weight. They don't know the exact weight before a flight. And besides, we're not asking them to transport weight, we're asking them to transport people. "The reason I didn't attempt to counter it directly was that by telling that story I was implicitly conceding your point, but I added that this was because the fat lobby were very vocal, but remember, those that shout the loudest aren't always right." You haven't proves to me that the "fat lobby" is more vocal than anyone else. Even if you want to accept that they're more vocal, then the reason that they're more vocal is that the other 80% of people don't care. And if they don't care, what are we arguing about? "20% of the population obese, you say? Well, I agree with you, it's absolutely appalling. It's an even higher percentage than here in the UK and we're a right bunch of flabby, indolent slobs!" You completely ignored my point that it's a high percentage. This is a demographic that we can't just ignore. "I mean, how can these people justify consuming so much more of the world's finite food resources than they actually need to stay healthy when millions of children go to bed hungry every night?" It's pretty appalling that instead of doing something about it you spend your time complaining to a teenager about how much you hate fat people over the internet, too. But that's also another debate. "Underweight people get a discount; Normal people pay the normal fare (see how reasonable that sounds); Everyone else pays a supplement according to how much extra weight they're carrying on their bodies. An airline who introduced this system would be able to reduce or maintain fares for most people while a few would pay a little extra to reflect the extra cost the airline incurs by carrying them." Alright, so now you're saying that they have to pay a little extra. If it's only a little, then why can't the airlines just continue to cover it, and not make people angry by charging them more? Once again, this is the idea of capitalism. The airline will keep profits up more by keeping fares the same. Whichever side is better capitalistically for the airline is the side you should vote for. This is clearly the CON, as it would only cost the airline, using my opponent's words, "a little extra" to compensate for any minuscule extra amount of fuel used to transport someone who weighs fifty pounds more than the average, while at the same time the CON side allows for more business and consequently more profits, as it does not alienate an entire fifth of the population.