ONE of Gulliver’s stranger flying experiences came in 2011, when he was preparing to board a domestic flight from Panama City to the beaches of Bocas del Toro. An airline employee motioned to a scale, and Gulliver dutifully placed his bag on it. “No,” she said, and in a conversation combining her broken English with his broken Spanish, communicated that, in fact, he himself was the item she wanted to weigh. The plane, it turned out, had only about six seats, and it was crucial to achieve a weight balance. Now an American airline is in trouble for a similar practice on a, well, much larger scale.

The problem for Hawaiian Airlines began when the carrier discovered it was burning through more fuel than anticipated on its route between Honolulu and the small Pacific island territory of American Samoa, according to reporting by the Associated Press. The airline ruled out explanations like strong winds and decided to conduct a voluntary survey among its passengers on the route. The results were clear: passengers and their carry-on luggage were, on average, 30 pounds (14 kilograms) heavier than expected.

So Hawaiian Airlines instituted a new policy. People flying between Honolulu and American Samoa would no longer be able to select their seats before arriving at the airport. Instead, they would be assigned seats when they checked in so that the carrier could distribute their weight evenly around the plane.

This is something of a sensitive issue for Samoans, who have among the highest rates of obesity in the world. Some of them felt the airline’s move was discriminatory; six complaints have been filed to the U.S. Department of Transportation since September 29th.

Samoans can’t be entirely surprised by Hawaiian Airlines’ move, since Samoa Air in 2013 became the first airline to charge passengers by weight. (Another commercial airline, Uzbekistan Airways, also began weighing passengers last year, but it does not charge different amounts based on flyers' heft.) Still, the people making the complaints argue that Hawaiian’s decision is discriminatory because it applies only to that one route, most of whose passengers are Samoan or of Samoan descent.

The department disagreed, and ruled in favour of the airline. Hawaiian told the Associated Press that it had conducted passenger weight surveys on other flight routes, but had scrapped seat pre-selection only on the American Samoa route because the others showed no evidence of excess weight.

Airline officials see the move as critical for safety. If heavy adults all cluster in one part of the plane, they say, that could pose a hazard in the event of a crash landing. And so they are trying to keep at least one seat open in each row or fill those seats with children.

On its face, there is nothing wrong with that. In fact, on a purely economic basis, it makes sense to charge passengers by weight, since that is directly correlated with fuel usage, which goes a long way in determining flight costs. (Similar logic applies in charging for checked and carry-on baggage.) But it is easy to understand why it feels wrong, particularly to overweight flyers, who are already subjected to the sneers of fellow passengers and a host of other indignities in the air.

Air travel serves as something of an equaliser for tall and short people. Tall people earn substantially more money on average, and so it seems only fair (from this short writer’s perspective) that they experience a bit of added discomfort or have to shell out extra for a roomier seat. But the overweight and obese? They receive no such life benefits, and it feels rather cruel, if not illegal, to ask them to pay extra for the same service.

The Samoan passengers have lost the battle with the transportation department, but they may end up winning the war that matters most to airlines: the one on the battlefield of public opinion, fought with dollars and cents. That might ultimately compel Hawaiian Airlines to come up with a different solution to meet its safety standards, one that doesn’t smack of unequal treatment.