160-kg woman pays for two airline seats far apart on plane

Samantha Scafe weighs 160 kg (353 lbs). She checked in on a Jetstar flight from Cairns to Coolangatta in Australia and was told she'd have to pay double because she was assigned two seats. Then she found out the two seats were in two seperate sections.

The IT expert said she was forced to pay for a second seat for herself "for other people’s comfort" when she was scheduled for a flight from Cairns to Coolangatta. Scafe said that after making the initial booking on January 15, she was told twice on January 18 by Jetstar 'not to worry about paying for a second fare because we can get around the policy of charging a big person for two seats". Yet when she booked in for the flight, Jetstar was adamant that she had to pay the full monty for two seats -- even though they did apologise for assigning her seats in different sections, saying it had been 'a human error', reports the Cairns Post. She's not taking it sitting down: she has already filed a complaint with the Anti-Discrimination Commission Queensland. She says she's been discriminated against because of her large size. see