Pave: Big Fat Fairy Tale, III

Let's be objective. This man is fat

Fernand Gamault,
Air France lawyer, suggesting how the court
might reasonably consider a 170 kg plaintiff
BOBIGNY December 19, 2006 (Scotsman/Reuters)

We imagine you to be disabused of the hokum about the French teacup heinie.

Alas, the seats of Air France, Europa's biggest airline and 20% French government owned, cannot accommodate the bigger booties of that fast growing demographic, the big fat Frenchie. Air France asks if your gluteal hemispheres distribute themselves across two or more seats that you pay for the spread.

But fat Frenchies take exception. First, it is humiliating because to pay for the extra freight draws attention to the obvious, they are fat, which without the purchase of additional tickets, they fondly suggest, nobody would notice. Second, it destroys the Republican principle of one heinie, one ticket. Third, there is the additional expense, money that could be spent on french fries or crèmes glacées.

You may remember our earlier post on Jean-Jacques Jauffret,* a French fatty who brought his larger issues to a French court. We read that the court has decided.

OBESE PASSENGER WINS CASE AGAINST AIR FRANCE

PARIS November 22, 2007 (Forbes/AFX/Thomson Financial) - A Frenchman who weighs 170 kilograms (375 pounds) has won a court case against Air France after it made him buy a second seat on a flight from New Delhi to Paris, he told AFP.

Jean-Jacques Jauffret, a 43-year-old screen-writer, said he was deeply humiliated when airline staff measured his girth with wrapping tape in front of other passengers at New Delhi airport.

Air France was ordered to pay 8,000 eur in damages and to reimburse the cost of his second seat, in a ruling delivered last Friday.

JE NE SUIS PAS GROS, JE SUIS FRANÇAIS !
Un Billet, Deux Sièges, SVP

Returning to France from a holiday in India in August 2005, Jauffret was told that as the plane was full he could not be assured a free seat next to him. Instead he was told to buy the extra ticket. M. Jauffret:

The court recognised the humiliation I suffered. Now Air France is going to have to say clearly what is its commercial policy. Does it carry people or kilos?

Our guess is the answer is both. The justice of Air France's cause is immediately apparent to anyone who has been seated in the window seat next to the single-ticketed M. Jaufrett and his avalanche of avoirdupois.

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* Writer and director of the short, Tout le monde est parfait (Everybody's Perfect).

PFFT (What is this?): Great big France triumphant 4 | 170 kilos (375 lb) is not fat 0 | Rayonnement français 0