As Jay said .. it's gag/hoax.
But.
It is an interesting dilemma. And it's NOT ridiculous. I'm a private pilot and I know that weight is a BIG issue for airlines. It does very seriously affect cost. Even when I fly a small plane, I have to calculate every single pound carefully - up to and including the weight of the fuel I put in the plane (gas weighs 6.15 lb per gallon, btw!
). so say you have a plane that holds 170 people. If those 170 people weigh an average of 180lbs each, that's 30,600 lbs total. If you increase that to an average of 200lbs each, the weight increases to 34,000 lbs. That's quite a bit of jet-fuel to carry that increased weight load.
That's one factor. The other factor is simply that of space. I have a friend who is extremely overweight (about 2x as heavy as I was at my heaviest) and she simply cannot fit in a regular airline seat. She has gotten lucky several times with buying a single seat and having no one sit next to her, so she can take up 2 seats, but several times she's had to buy 2 seats (which makes her really angry - and while I can understand being embarassed, I don't think she really has a right to be angry about it).
It really is a very large (no pun intended) problem for airlines and one that they can't bring up easily with the public for fear of being branded as "sizeist" or "fat bashing".
.