"This is the fairest way of traveling," Samoa Air chief executive Chris Langton told Australia's ABC Radio. "There are no extra fees in terms of excess baggage or anything - it is just a kilo is a kilo is a kilo."
The airline, which flies domestically and to American Samoa, the Cook Islands and Tonga, will charge rates ranging from $1 a kilogram on the airline's shortest domestic route to about $4.16 per kilogram for travel from Samoa to American Samoa, according to ABC Radio.
Under the new pricing system, passengers of Samoa Air, which operate N2A Islander and Cessna 172 aircraft, will need to enter their estimated weight during online booking and airfare will be calculated using their weight. "You travel happy, knowing full well that you are only paying for exactly what you weigh... nothing more," states the Samoa Air website.
Langton believes his airline's new payment policy will also help promote health and obesity awareness in Samoa, a Pacific island nation with a serious obesity problem, reports the the Sydney Morning Herald.
Some airlines have policies in place that require obese passengers to reserve two seats instead of one but this is the first time an airline has implemented a per-kilo rate.
"People generally are bigger, wider and taller than they were 50 years ago," Langton told ABC Radio. "The industry will start looking at this."
I have to disagree that this is punitive. This seems perfectly fair. It costs money to fly something through the air with technology, and the cost should be proportional to the weight of the object carried, whether this is a human being or a bag of rocks.
It may seem punitive because we're used to "one ticket one price" or the idea that people are equal as beings and have dignity. But when it comes to pricing the cost of lifting something way up into the air and sending it somewhere on a craft that always has the same external shape, the weight is really the only major factor in determining the extra cost for that object.
I can't see how you could call it punitive unless the weight added to a plane from passengers only made a negligible difference in fuel costs, in which case a surcharge would indeed be unjustified discrimination. But otherwise, my question is, why should the airlines be forced to charge the same price for a service that costs more for different people? You can't argue with physics or basic economics.