Obesity in American Samoa to blame?
The US Transportation Department is investigating the claims of two American Samoan businessmen who filed a complaint against Hawaiian Airlines’ new policy of weighing the passengers before they board flights.
The complaint says that the passengers were weighed before boarding and were assigned specific seats to keep the load evenly throughout the flight.
According to Radio New Zealand, the Hawaiian Airlines has adopted a policy of weighing the passengers flying to or from Pago Pago, the capital of American Samoa, for redistributing the weight in its Boeing 767 flights to meet the manufacturer’s guidelines.
The passengers flying to or from American Samoa won’t be allowed to select their own seats. Instead, the company will assign seats to the passengers. The number of adults per row will be limited and some seats in certain rows will be reserved for young children.
“Hawaiian is saying that it is a safety issue. So have we been flying unsafe for all these years?” Avamua Dave Haleck, who filed the complaint, told Radio New Zealand.
Haleck said the policy is discriminatory against the people from American Samoa.
According to the report, the Boeing 767-300 aircraft, used by the airline company to operate its flights on the Honolulu-Pago Pago route can safely travel a distance of 11,090km, more than twice the distance of 4,176km (2,595 miles) between the two destinations. The carrier has a seating capacity of 269.
The new policy of the airline is attributed to the higher rate of obesity in American Samoa. According to the CIA’s World Factbook, American Samoa has the highest rate of obesity in the world.
About 74.6 percent of the population is obese according to CIA. One-third of Samoans suffer from type two diabetes mainly because of their diet that consists of cheap, imported fast food.