Frenchman too heavy to fly

NEW YORK: A young Frenchman who weighs 230 kilograms (500 pounds) and was deemed too heavy to fly on a jetliner arrived in New York Tuesday to head home by ship. Kevin Chenais and his parents arrived at Penn Station in New York by train from Chicago. They will stay at a hotel in Brooklyn until they catch the Queen Mary 2 for England.
Chenais, 22, has a hormone imbalance and came to the United States from France in 2012 for obesity treatment at the Mayo Clinic in Chicago.  He had planned to fly home in late October but British Airways refused to let him board the plane on the grounds he was too fat. The family spent more than a week at a hotel near Chicago airport as they tried to resolve the situation. On Monday they decided to take a train to New York, from where they will sail for England on November 19. “It is mainly my parents who are angry,” he told reporters, looking tired after the 19-hour train trip from Chicago.–AFP

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