Two American Samoan businessmen have filed separate complaints with the United States Transportation Department over Hawaiian Airlines’ policy to weight the passengers before boarding.
They claim that they had to be weighed before they boarded a flight from Honolulu . They also were assigned specific seats to keep the load evenly around the aircraft.
Avamua Dave Haleck and Daniel King said the new policy seemed very discriminatory against Samoans because it is applied only on flights between Honolulu and Pago Pago. They claim nowhere else in the Hawaiian system the passengers were asked to be weighed and online seat selection couldn’t be made only for American Samoa flights.
Samoa Air is the first airline in the world to charge trevelers according to their weight. In 2013, the airline started to weighed passengers at check-in before allocating seats. Customers were asked to pay for each kilo that they weighed combined with their luggage.
The policy may be driven by the fact that American Samoa, according to some researches, has the highest rate of obesity in the world. A remarkable 94 per cent of its adult population are considered obese.
iHawaiian Airlines operates several Boeing 767 aircrafts, with a seating capacity of 269 and a range of 6,890 miles. The flight between Honolulu and Pago Pago covers a distance of 2,600 miles. The South Pacific carrier, which largely operates domestic routes, says there is an obesity epidemic in American Samoa and the weight and balance of the plane are needed to be controlled.