Samoa Air becomes the first airline to charge by passenger weight

Pay by the kilo

Samoa Air, based in the Samoan capital Apia, became the first airline to charge passengers according to how much they weigh — meaning heavier passengers pay more.

The logic, as the airline put it: "We at Samoa Air are keeping airfares fair, by charging our passengers only for what they weigh. You are the master of your air 'fair' — you decide how much (or little) your ticket will cost. No more exorbitant excess baggage fees or being charged for baggage you may not carry. Your weight plus your baggage items is what you pay for. Simple."

When booking online, customers enter their estimated weight plus baggage, and the fare is calculated per kilo — with rates varying by flight length. Customers prepay, and the airline weighs them at the airport to settle the difference.

The airline's case

Chief executive Chris Langton argued it was the fairest model: "People have always travelled on the basis of their seat, but as many airline operators know, airlines don't run on seats — they run on weight. The smaller the aircraft you are in, the less variance you can accept in terms of the difference in weight between passengers."

"A kilo is a kilo is a kilo," he told ABC radio — no separate excess-baggage fees, since body and baggage are weighed together. Families, he said, were the most pleasantly surprised: children are weighed rather than charged a full seat fare, so "a family of maybe two adults and a couple of mid-sized kids and younger children can travel for considerably less than what they were being charged before."

"There is no doubt in my mind that this is the concept of the future," Langton said. "We always weigh the mass that is on an aircraft... it doesn't matter whether you are carrying freight or people."

The backdrop

The policy followed public comments by Norwegian professor Bharat Bhatta, who had argued overweight passengers should pay more because of the extra fuel needed to transport them — an idea that had already sparked a global debate about fairness versus discrimination.

Whether pay-by-weight was the future of airfares or a publicity stunt, Samoa Air had forced the question: when fuel is priced by the gallon and planes fly by the ton, why are tickets still priced by the seat?

Archive summary, April 2013, based on contemporary reporting.