Originally Posted by
snic
I've said this before and it still makes sense to me. United should weigh not only bags before boarding, but passengers as well - and charge extra for pounds over a predefined limit. They could even give you a discount if you're less than a certain weight (kids, Kate Moss, etc).
As long as you're advocating applying the baggage limitation standards to humans, why not go with the linear inches aspect (oversized bags), rather than the weight aspect (overweight bags)? Isn't the OP's complaint that the pax next to him was too large to fit into his own seat, and thus occupied the OP's seat, rather than that the pax was too heavy?
And in fact, UA policy does set a linear inches limitation, by saying that the passenger must be able to fit into his/her seat w/ the armrests down, or else must purchase two seats.