Jumbo-size passengers hit China airlines' bottom line

BEIJING, Oct 6 (Reuters) Chinese airlines are being forced to rearrange their seating to accommodate a burgeoning number of overweight passengers but risk squeezing their profits into the bargain, Xinhua news agency said on Friday.

A source with China Eastern Airlines was quoted as saying the company had imported all its aircraft from the West, where people were generally bigger, but the company planned to reduce by about 20 the number of seats on the new Airbus 321 to enlarge the bottom-line seating space, the agency said.

''China's civil airlines always have empty seats, especially in the low season. So, it is reasonable for companies to think about reducing the number of seats, even though it might not be a small investment,'' Xia Hongshan, vice dean of Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, was quoted as saying.

Early this year, a China Southern Airlines aircraft delayed takeoff for two hours because two passengers began quarrelling over seating space, Xinhua said.

''Without larger seats, more quarrels will certainly happen,'' Wen Weiliang, director of the China Health Care Association, was quoted as saying.

Obesity has become a major health problem in China, a problem blamed at least in part on a new fondness for fatty, Western fast food.

Wen cited statistics showing that nearly 20 million adults in China were overweight. In large cities, the ratio was 30 percent.

''Airlines are also concerned about the profits lost that seating re-arrangement might incur because aircraft are usually full during the peak seasons which add up to roughly one month per year,'' Xinhua said.

''So some companies have adopted a compromise scheme by placing passengers in alternate seats in low seasons.'' REUTERS SP DS1315