Call for fat flyers to pay more

A former Qantas executive has renewed calls for overweight passengers to be taxed an extra fee to fly on planes.

Tony Webber, who was Qantas group chief economist until 2011, says "people who weigh more should pay more" in the same way airlines currently charge a fee for excess baggage, The Age reported.

"The rationale is simple. The fuel burnt by planes depends on many things but the most important is the weight of the aircraft. The more a plane weighs, the more fuel it must burn," he wrote in a column for the newspaper.

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

The average Australian's weight has increased by 2kg since 2000, which Mr Webber said would cost an airline flying three times a day from Sydney to London via Singapore around $1 million extra a year in fuel costs.

That amounts to a 13 percent chunk of an airline's profits, which are already coming under threat from rising fuel costs, he said.

Mr Webber denied the introduction of a surcharge for overweight passengers was discriminatory, arguing that other service providers including cinemas and trains set ticket prices on the basis of age and employment status.

He proposed passengers should be weighed at check in along with their bags and forced to pay a surcharge if they are over a pre-determined limit.

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