Passengers must smell not-bad to fly for no extra charge.
There was a designated smoking room directly next to my departure gate in Bucharest. I watched as at least 50 people smoked cigarettes in the not-so-large room, puffing the smoke carelessly in front of them, not worrying about it getting in their clothes or on their body. And while the room was isolated from the main area, I could only imagine what it smelled like. And then it dawned on me: one of these people could be near me, or—gasp—even next to me on the plane!
There was a non-zero chance I would have to endure the four-hour flight to Qatar sitting next to a person coated in and emanating cigarette smoke. This prompted the obvious question: why do airlines allow this? If they really care about customer service, they'd probably rather have the passengers affected by the smelly person be happy than the smelly person themselves. (There are some market considerations to take into account, but that's not for here.)
Introducing the Airline Smell Tax.
And yes, I realize the following will never be implemented and it has flaws, but remember that flying is a privilege, not a right, and my comfort is more important than other's financial abilities.
The idea is fairly simple in concept: the more offensive someone smells, the more they pay to the people affected.
The scale of smell ranges from no offense to highly offensive:
Tax values are a percentage of the total ticket cost and determined based on the sum of the judges' ratings:
For example, a passenger who "scores" a 10 and is sitting in the middle of a three-seat row on a four-hour, $300 flight will pay $300 × 0.04 × 4 hours = $48/passenger, or $384 total to all eight passengers negatively affected. Steep, but that's the point: passengers will be heavily incentivized to not smell offensive at boarding.
The procedure for determining the appropriate tax bracket is as follows:
Overcompensation in the form of smell maskers—cologne, perfume, etc—will likely occur, but the rating system takes this into account given its "offensive" nature. If someone wears a bit of perfume, then most judges will not be offended and rate them a zero. If someone wears an excessive amount of overpowering perfume, then most judges will find it too much and rate them a non-zero. The key to not paying the tax is to minimize both "loudness" and negativity of smell, or in other words, smell nice or not at all.
Sometimes people get caught in unlucky circumstances that make them smell bad: running late to the airport from work and getting sweaty while running to the terminal, spilling something on themselves by accident, etc. Should someone be punished for circumstances like this? Are excuses acceptable? The answer is somewhat obvious based on the link, and yes, I am heartless.
Some populations smell different than others due to dietary or cultural reasons. This difference can mean they smell subjectively bad to none, one, or multiple judges, leading to "unfair" ratings—they wouldn't be judged so harshly if the judges were from the same population! This is why there are four judges selected at random.
Again, if one of the affected passengers was not offended and did not want to be compensated, they could simply refuse the payment.
This would not prolong the boarding process at all. The four S1 judges would be pre-notified and report to the front desk for their duty directly before the first boarding group. From there, passengers would be rated after scanning their boarding pass and before entering the plane. The loitering that happens in the main aisleway while finding seats would be significantly reduced since the bottleneck would be at the smell station.