Airline flab tax weighed

BRISBANE -- Australian fatties who want to fly may soon face a flab tax.

The idea of making heavier passengers pay more was openly examined this week in the Sydney Morning Herald by a former airline executive, who made a compelling argument.

Australians are rapidly becoming the heftiest race on the planet. We may have an international reputation as a physical, highly active people kept trim by nation-building. But what with much of the infrastructure built, many of us have found time to relax and become large blobs of blubber.

The Herald reported that between 1926 and 2008, the average weight of an Aussie woman rose from 59 kilograms to 71 kg. And the average weight of an Aussie male adult increased from 72 to 85 kg.

The now powerful boss of the Australian Greens, Bob Brown, himself a slim man, is so appalled at this nation of gluttons that last October he proposed a fat tax.

Brown's idea would follow the Denmark model, where saturated fats apparently attract a tax of about $3 per kg. "Overweight and obesity costs the economy directly $8 billion and indirectly up to $50 billion to $60 billion a year, so we should look at the Danes," he told a summit.

Jane Martin, senior adviser with pressure group Obesity Policy Coalition, says something needs to be done in a country where six in 10 adults and one in four children are either overweight or obese.

The Labor government has not slapped a levy on cheeseburgers but, with radical moves to stamp out smoking and other efforts to make us healthier, a fat tax is not outside the realm of possibility.

This week, Tony Webber, who was chief economist for the national airline Qantas between 2004 and 2011, gave a public airing to an idea far more intriguing than a Danish-style fat tax.

Webber, an associate professor at the University of Sydney business school, believes airlines should get out the scales before accepting a booking.

"To cut to the chase: People who weigh more should pay more to fly on planes, in the same way that people who exceed their baggage allowance must fork out extra," he wrote.

While the proposal might, at first blush, appear a little harsh, Webber, who has the bottom line firmly in his sights, says the weight of the plane is crucial when it comes to fuel economy.

"If the passengers on the aircraft weigh more, the aircraft consumes more fuel and the airline's costs go up."

And the skinny people in their cigarette-leg jeans sipping sugarless coffee are being discriminated against.

When the airline raises fares to cover additional fuel costs, the trim and terrific are given no discount for passing up the hamburgers and beer.

Webber estimates that since 2000, the extra weight per Australian passenger has increased by two kilograms.

That means from Sydney to London via Singapore, an extra 3.72 extra barrels of jet fuel per flight is burned at a cost of about $472, he says.

Multiply that by the hundreds of trips the average airline does a year and you have a sizable fat cost on top of every other overhead.

"If the airline flies three times a day to London, the cost of carrying two extra kilograms per person is about $1 million per year."

Webber's idea is a step beyond the moves by some U.S. and European airline companies to insist an obese person pay for two tickets if their body takes up a fair portion of their neighbour's allocated space.

But he insists it is merely following the rules of what economists call price discrimination. Charging consumers who buy essentially the same product at a different price is common in many economies. Australian movie theatres, for example, give discounts to the elderly, and trains charge different prices for different times of travel.

Webber calculates that if the critical weight limit was, say, 75 kilograms, and a man weighed 100 kilograms, then the passenger would pay an extra $14.50 one way or double for return.

It might seem a little steep, but it also contains an extraordinary incentive for frequent flyers, who could save hundreds of dollars a year on weight-loss programs by merely trying to meet the weigh-in for a cheaper ticket.

Michael Madigan is the Winnipeg Free Press correspondent in Australia. He writes mostly about politics for the Brisbane-based Courier Mail.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition January 13, 2012 A11