Should this man be able to fly on a plane?

By BILL SANDERSON

Last Updated: 8:28 AM, December 4, 2009

Posted: 3:56 AM, December 4, 2009

Comments: 44

Danger -- wide load!

Federal aviation authorities investigated an Internet photo showing a massively fat flier's flab oozing hazardously into the aisle of an American Airlines plane -- but said yesterday that before the flight took off, attendants decided to give the man two extra seats, apparently in line with safety rules.

Worried that the severely obese passenger would block the plane's aisle in an emergency, American cleared out the normal-sized guy in the adjacent seat by offering him a ticket on a later flight.

Then, the American crew assigned the fat man two more seats. "The passenger in this case had a whole row to himself," said Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Laura Brown.

JUMBO JET: This photo of an obese man on an American Airlines flight led to an FAA investigation and scrutiny of safety policies.

The fat flier was buckled in the middle seat with a seat belt and one seat-belt extender -- to have given him two extenders would have violated safety rules.

The rules allowed the man to sit with the arms of his row's middle seat raised up, Brown said.

"There were no FAA rules violated," Brown said.

The flight took off from San Francisco. Brown couldn't confirm its final destination or flight date -- the picture surfaced a few weeks ago on the airline Web site Flightglobal.com.

American Airlines officials were mum about the incident yesterday, and it was unclear whether the fat man had to pay for the two extra seats.

Airline rules vary widely on how to handle plus-sized passengers who can't fit into cramped seats. JetBlue leaves to its crews how to deal with fat passengers; Delta says it deals with them on a case-by-case basis. American has said it has no hard-and-fast fat-flier rules.

Whether it's a safety issue is cause for debate.

Overweight and obese passengers have not factored in any commercial plane crashes, a search of the National Transportation Safety Board database shows. And one airline source noted that children and slow-moving elderly passengers could hamper evacuations as much as an obese person.

In the last decade, several pilots and airline crews have anonymously reported to the FAA their concerns with fat passengers, and in 2003 a captain was replaced by his airline after he refused to take off with a 600-pound paraplegic passenger he feared couldn't be safely evacuated from the plane.

Two fat people in an airline's emergency-exit row rendered the exit "useless," reported a pilot in another anonymous FAA report that also doesn't name the airline.

"One of the ladies was so large that she physically wouldn't be able to exit the aircraft through the emergency exit," wrote the pilot, who was a passenger on the 2004 flight.

"I believe this to be a safety compromise."

Additional reporting by Chuck Bennett and Perry Chiaramonte

bill.sanderson@nypost.com

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Comments (23)

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Nobody333

12/23/2009 2:14 PM

If this guy just stopped being so fat, he wouldn't have this problem. Instead, he will most likely just cry about it and blame everyone else.
There's absolutely no excuse to be this fat. Why should society have to accommodate him? Even if he's not a hazard to other passengers, he's creating an unnecessary inconvenience.
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sher33

12/21/2009 3:41 PM

Of course he should be allowed to fly, but he should have had the forsight to know he could not possibly fit in one seat and instead purchased a full row in advance to save everyone the hastle. A 200 lb man has a hard time fitting in those seats let alone a 600 lb man.
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concerned

12/21/2009 5:17 AM

PICTURE THIS... AIRPLANE CRASH LANDS - YOUR OKAY, FAT GUY IS DEAD. FIRE IS UNDER YOUR FEET AND ON YOUR BUTT. CAN'T MOVE GUY TO GET OUT ONLY EXIT. OH WELL!!!
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BillyfromPhilly

12/18/2009 2:36 PM

You people are just great! You have sympathy for Alcoholics and drug users, the rich and famous who drink themselves into severe illness and then go into "rehab", but not those horrible fat slobs, eh? Rather give an alcoholic a liver transplant, at great expense and strain on the health care system, and not even entertain the possibility that putting food in your mouth MIGHT be the same kind of disease as putting white powder up your nose, or grain alcohol down their throat. How Christian and compassionate you are! Face it, you are bashing fat people because they are one of the few groups left you can bully-- and oh HOW do people love to bully someone! I'm sitting here in London, in fear now of flying home to my sister and her family tomorrow for christmas after reading this filth. I've lost more weight, had more "willpower" than any of you-- yeah YOU, who drinks 5 beers every night, and doesn't think he has a problem. Yeah, I'll buy 2 plane tickets, if the pilot promises me he is SOBER!
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SanFran

12/12/2009 12:24 AM

I know this man and he is a great guy. All you haters have something you hate about yourselves are you wouldn't be hitting on the man so hard. Maybe you shouldn't be allowed to fly - I sure wouldn't want to have the seat next to you.
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Birftard

12/11/2009 5:16 AM

WTF is he sitting on ? The arm rest ? So that thing is digging up his booty for the whole flight ? lol
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Michelle

12/07/2009 12:26 PM

I fly at least once a month and agree that if you take up two seats, you should pay for two seats. It would be the same as me sitting with a child on my lap or trying to cram another skinny person in the seat with me. I'm not trying to be mean, but it is the truth. I agree that seats should be a little bigger, but they're not.
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HAHAHA

12/07/2009 7:14 AM

Is OBama's healthcare plan gonna cover that guy's fat Azz??????