Lisa Tealer can’t use seat-back trays when she’s flying because she’s "fat," she says.
So the diversity executive of a biotech company in the San Francisco Bay Area uses her laptop as her tray. She uses candor about her weight to defuse awkward situations during boarding. "If I have to sit in the middle, I tell people, ‘Hopefully, it won’t be too uncomfortable for you.’ "
Mark Diamond, a 6-foot-4 CEO of a technology firm in California, is an avid student of aircraft types so he can avoid the seat he most dreads — a bulkhead seat that keeps him from slipping his legs under the seat in front of him. "It’s a lot of work. I hear guys who are 5-6 complain about how difficult flying is, and I’m like, ‘You have no idea,’ " he says.
Flying — an act that entails sitting still, often for hours, in a cramped space — has never been easy for those who carry more of themselves on board than others. But travelers who are heavy or tall are feeling the effects of airlines’ penny-pinching moves more acutely than others.
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