The policy may be more inclusive than I first interpreted. According to the Canadian Transport Agency website,

“For persons disabled by obesity, the Agency cites the practical experience of Southwest Airlines, which screens for entitlement to an additional seat by determining whether a person can lower the seat’s armrests.”

This makes it sound like the status of “disability” for fat people is assessed on whether they can fit into the seat — not on other functional disabilities. I sincerely hope this is the case (though I still feel that the “disability” rests not with the people who can’t fit into the seats, but with the design of the seats and aircraft interior), because it could mean that fat people who don’t fit into a seat are simply considered entitled to a second seat, free of charge.

How ironic, then, that what might very well be helping fat people get the access to transportation is a policy based on Southwest Airlines’ fairly random process of deciding who is entitled to a second seat — and, accordingly, “entitled” to pay double the fare.

I really hope this means what I think it means. For me personally, it will mean travelling without the attendant fear always hovering somewhere over my left shoulder that a random gate agent will decide I am not acceptable-looking enough to be allowed on their aircraft, and that I should pay for my trip twice (which would preclude many people, myself included, from travelling altogether. As I live 3,000 miles away from my family, in another country, it’s rather important that on the rare occasions I do travel, that I actually, you know, get there.) In a time when air travel has become a distressing and tortuously inconvenient process, this could lighten the burden on many, many travellers.

So, thank you, disability advocates, for fighting for this. We’ll see what happens in practice.