The European budget airline Ryanair is on a mission to cut fuel costs. In addition to announcing that it will now print its in flight magazine, which will also double as a menu, on thinner paper, Ryanair is also cutting the amount of ice on board and will reduce the weight of the seats and carts. These changes will save them thousands of pounds in fuel and printing costs, but that’s not all they are doing to lighten their load.

Flight attendants for Ryanair may find their jobs in jeopardy if they don’t keep their weight in check. Airline spokesman Stephen McNamara told The Telegraph: “We encourage staff to watch their weight – with the motivation of appearing in the annual Ryanair calendar.”

Sounds crazy, but some airlines do more than encourage. Thai Airways required specific BMI and waist line measurements of their flight attendants last March, and gave employees six months to drop the weight. In August 2010, the same happened to 28 Turkish Airline flight attendants who were given six months to lose weight or be faced with termination.

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Last December I wrote about a Canadian Supreme Court decision to give the right to extremely obese people to have two seats for the price of one on airlines.

But the European discount airline Ryanair isn’t being so kind. They took the initiative to ask the public what they should do with obese passengers. More than 100,000 people voted on whether or not they should charge fees to “very large” passengers. Twenty-nine percent voted for “excess fees for very overweight passengers.” And the “yeas” have it.
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