It was a shortish flight in a smallish plane — LAX to Tucson, I think — and the flight attendant was explaining the regulations about the emergency exit. Which go something like this:
Anyone sitting next to an emergency exit must be willing and able to assist with evacuation, should that become necessary. If you are not willing and able to help in an emergency, please let the cabin crew know.
As she spoke, I had a pretty clear view of the woman sitting in the exit seat on the other side of the aisle, one row up.
She wasn’t just overweight, or fat, or even obese. She was simply enormous — roughly the size of a compact car. The seat next to her, not surprisingly, was unoccupied.
As I mentioned, it was a small plane. With a very small emergency exit. There was no way this woman could have got through the door, let alone assisted anyone else.
In the event of an emergency, the only thing the cabin staff could possibly have done was to heave her out of her seat and roll her down the aisle to clear the way for the other passengers… (and then, presumably, leave her to her fate trapped in the burning wreckage).
Interestingly, no one said a thing. Not the other passengers. Not the lady herself. Not even the cabin crew. She sat there till we touched down safely in Tucson, while I wondered: do good manners trump the instinct for self-preservation? Were the cabin crew stuck between a rock and a hard place: political correctness (or the fear of litigation) versus the safety of their other passengers?
Please. If you’re a Jumbo, stick to planes your own size. Or sit at the back, and give the rest of us a fighting chance.