almost 50 percent of the 45,000 votes so far are in favour of the fat tax

Following on from a suggestion last month by Ryanair that passengers who wanted to use the toilet should pay a pound, the latest idea to come from the low cost airline is that overweight passengers should be made to pay extra in the form of a ‘fat tax’. The idea probably came from the recent news that United, an American airline will be charging passengers for two seats if they cannot fit into one.

In view of the fact that United claim to have had over 700 complaints from passengers who were seated next to overweight individuals and who said that their enjoyment of the flight was compromised as a result, the proposal from Ryanair does not sound so crazy. In fact Ryanair has decided to actually ask customers what extra taxes they should be charging for on the plane and should the fat tax come out on top they could justify introducing it by arguing that it is what the customers want.  So far the results show that almost 50 percent of the 45,000 votes so far are in favour of the fat tax and the second most popular suggestion was a charge of £3 to be allowed to smoke in a specially adapted toilet.

However some people are saying that this proposal is merely a publicity stunt like so many of the others that have been dreamt up by Ryanair. Michael O’Leary who is the outspoken boss of the company is well aware that bad publicity actually gets the number of seats bookings to rise. He knows that people only travel Ryanair for one reason and that is price, and therefore they can’t very well complain about bad service and having to pay for extra perks.

At Ukmedix News we believe that Ryanair won’t introduce this tax because it will alienate many passengers and actually end up in reduced passenger numbers which is all Ryanair care about!