More bad news for the troubled US airline industry: millions of dollars are spent annually in extra fuel costs to transport the increasingly obese traveling public.
Moe than $275 million in fuel costs in a recent year had to be backed onto airline costs because of beefier American bodies, according to researchers for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,.
That comes on top of already rising fuel costs.
United Airlines said last week it will likely spend $1.2 billion more on fuel this year than first projected, according to Reuters.
The Federal Aviation Administration has added ten pounds to per-passenger weight assumptions for calculating aircraft loads. The move came after the crash of a commuter plane in North Carolina that was possibly caused by weight and balance issues.
Report by David Wilkening
