Fatphobia: plus-size model denounced not letting her get on a plane

Angry plus-size model says she was prevented from boarding a Qatar Airways flight to her native Brazil because it was too big for its place.

The social media influencer Juliana Nehme, 38 years old, it has now accused the Middle Eastern airline of discriminating against it because of its size. In a post to his 118,000 Instagram followers, JUliana said she was not allowed to board her flight from Beirut to Doha on Nov. 22.

He had vacationed in Lebanon with his family and had arrived in the country via Air France without any problems, he told his followers. But when he was denied boarding on his first flight home, he also missed his connection to São Paulo, where he lives.

Juliana said Qatar Airways did not offer to refund the $1,000 she paid for her ticket. Instead he claimed it the airline told him that he needed to buy a first class ticket, which has bigger seats, for $3,000, to seat her on the plane.

Juliana took to social media to vent: ‘They’re denying me the right to travel… I’m desperate, help me, they don’t want me to get on board because I’m fat’. The influencer ended up staying in Lebanon with her mother, while her sister and nephew returned home.

He told his followers: ‘Too bad a company like Qatar allows this kind of discrimination against people! I’m fat, but I’m just like everyone else! At the time of writing this report, she Juliana remained in Lebanon unable to return home.

“I am here at the Qatar Airways counter, with the tickets I bought to go to Doha and from Doha to Brazil,” Nehme told his thousands of Instagram followers in Portuguese. ‘For no reason, The Qatari flight attendant said I can’t board because I’m too fat and according to her I have no right to have this plane ticket.”

‘I paid $1,000 for my plane ticket, almost R$6,000 (Brazilian currency). I’m here with my mother, sister and nephew, a total of 4,000 dollars in tickets for her just to deny the tickets and not let me get on the plane to Doha, because I’m fat.

‘Now what I have to do? They are denying me the right to travel, but I came here with AirFrance and everything went well, I had no problems. And now they are denying me the ticket,” said Nehme, clearly annoyed. “They require me to buy an executive ticket to return to my country, but I came here on a normal ticket.”

‘I’m desperate, they don’t want me to get on the plane because I’m fat. I have to buy a business ticket, which costs 3,000 dollars, I don’t have this money. I don’t know what to do, there are only 30 minutes left for the plane to take off. They say I have no right to get on the plane because I’m fat. I do not know what to do.’

The best airline in the world

Qatar Airways has been named the best airline in the world at the Skytrax World Airline Awards 2022, for a record seventh time. With airlines looking to cut costs as much as possible, how to deal with the sensitive issue of overweight passengers was controversial.

Air carriers are responsible for calculating the weight and balance of your aircraft to ensure it is within the permitted limits for aircraft safety. In the United States, It has been suggested that the country’s Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) weigh some passengers before boarding.

In recent years, rising obesity rates in the United States mean that the standard numbers used by the airline industry for average passenger weight they are probably out of date and therefore unsafe to use.

It was said at the time that weighing selected passengers at airports would establish a more accurate number for the average passenger weight so that the number of available seats on flights could be adjusted accordingly.

Critics of such a move say it would open the door to discriminatory practices.