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Southwest Declares Kevin Smith Too Fat To Fly
theodp writes "Kevin Smith is not a happy Southwest customer. The director was thrown off a flight from Oakland to Burbank, after being deemed too fat to fly. He later wound up on another Southwest flight, but has declared It's On and taken his rants to Twitter. 'Dear @SouthwestAir — I know I'm fat, but was Captain Leysath really justified in throwing me off a flight for which I was already seated?' he began. He also let the airline know he'd made it to his destination. 'Hey @SouthwestAir! I've landed in Burbank. Don't worry: wall of the plane was opened & I was airlifted out while Richard Simmons supervised.'"
Even if they can get their butts between the armrests, the rest of them overflows into the next seat.
They should have required him to buy two seats, since he takes up two seats and twice the gas as a normal person.
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If he was really too fat to fly they never should have sold him a ticket.
And they'd better damn well have given him a full refund or a free transfer or it's fraud.
I still think its awesome, but let's keep this next celebrity rivalry off of slashdot. Slashdot didn't cover trump vs o'donnel, and it doesn't cover paris hilton, so while Kevin Smith is a nerd celeb, let's not report on every twitter update in this matter? Mmmkay?
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If he was really too fat to fly they never should have sold him a ticket.
how exactly is the airline supposed to know he is too fat when they sell the ticket? Most airlines sell their tickets online without ever seeing the person.
Qxe4
I'm about 135 pounds. Why the fuck do I get charged extra if my bag is 55 pounds, when the fat bastard behind me has 150 pounds on me, and his bag is slightly less? Like somebody mentioned above, yes, I DO think they should weigh people before they get on. The nominal reason for this is fuel charges, right? Can I get a discount because I'm not toting my giant bloated belly around?
</rant>
The only reason they're working to resolve it is because of Kevin Smith. If it was a nobody with no platform to mention this from, Southwest would've cared much less.
If he was really too fat to fly they never should have sold him a ticket.
I understand the sentiment, but how would you implement that? Are you going to make people weigh in before they can buy a ticket? Going to rely on self reporting?
I've always thought that people should be counted in the weight allowance instead of just luggage. A bit porky like me? You get to bring less stuff (or pay more for the same stuff). Properly obese? You get even less. That and people who are for too large to fit in a single seat (with people to their sides being comfortable too) should be made to purchase the double seat they need.
Of course there are logistical complications to this. Firstly there is weight distribution between the passenger cabin and luggage hold which may affect the handling of the craft if most of the passengers are porkies with little luggage. And there is the issue of defining what constitutes too big for one seat. And finally there will be the people who cry like babies and moan that "it isn't my fault" - well it might not be (in which case get a medical cert and we'll consider some extra compassion) but it isn't the airline's fault either and it certainly isn't the fault of the other passengers who get less space between them because of your lardy presence. Another complication is what to do at the other end of the scale - it would be important not to encourage the "a stick of celery and half a tomato is more than enough for lunch" mob so there would need to be lower limit on the luggage gains (perhaps the weight distribution issue would be a legitimate reason for imposing this lower limit).
FYI: I'm a chunk overweight myself and not exactly getting any less so as time passes, and I would have no problem with getting a lower luggage allowance than someone of more healthy proportions. It seems quite fair to me: I want you to transport X kilograms of stuff from here to there which will use up Y amount of fuel, it just so happens that Z% of that mass is me and the heavy boots I prefer to wear. What's that? Xkg is over the total allowance and I'll have to pay a fee for the extra? Fair enough.
The only reason they're working to resolve it is because of Kevin Smith. If it was a nobody with no platform to mention this from, Southwest would've cared much less.
Actually, I suspect it's mostly because it's on Twitter that they reacted at all. Random average Joes have had similar responses from other corporations as well. They tend to be scared to death of bad publicity and Twitter especially seems to make them nervous.
Of course, the fact that it's a celebrity, however minor (sorry Kevin; I love your films but ...) on Twitter doesn't exactly hurt.
You know the thing about UDP jokes? I don't care if you get it or not.
Or just charge by weight.
My guess is that weight isn't the issue, it's volume size and overflow into adjacent seats. Could a fat man fly if he didn't have any checked bags? Could a high density, heavily muscled, guy get kicked off because he weighs too much but is compact enough to not overflow the seat? If it is weight dependent, couldn't a fat man pay the extra $10 in fuel?.. or reduce his baggage weight? I think it has to do with seat overflow.. which is related to weight but more about volume.
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Well, don't forget the skinny, tall people like me (6'2", 135lbs). I can't get into a seat without my knees getting smashed by the seat ahead. And forget it if the person in front tries to put the seat back. I can only fit (semi-comfortably) in exit-row seats, or other rows where there's extra leg space.
It's one of the reasons why I now refuse to fly.
If you're going to charge the fat folks extra, you gotta give the rest of us the price break on kids' tickets.
Well, what it comes down to is they can only sell whole seats. Your 6 year old might only need half a seat, but that still means he's taking up the whole seat - they can't sell the other half seat to someone else. A fat guy might prefer to buy 1.5 seats, but that isn't an option: he has to buy 2 seats, and that second seat is being taken away from another paying customer.
On the other hand, there's a possible solution: seat the kid who isn't using half of his seat next to the fat guy who needs an extra half seat. But in order to accurately bill everyone for the fractional seats they use, the airline would have to know everyone's measurements ahead of time (not just weight, because bulk is what really matters).
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Damn straight it's about seat overflow. I flew from LA to Sydney (15 hr flight) next to a rather stout Polish tire salesman. He couldn't even fit into the damn seat! He lifted the arm rest, took over half of my seat, and I would up crunched against a couple next to me.
When I found out, I complained to the QANTAS stewardess, and she said that I could move seats later. Quite hard on a full plane.
you know how uncomfortable it is having a seat rest firmly wedged in your back for 15 hours?
Sorry people of carriage, but if your caboose cannot fit into the seat to the point where you need to lift your armrest, you simply need to buy another god damned seat.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
The seat I, not they, paid for.
Yes, it's not right to sneer at people for being fat, whether it's their fault or not. It's perfectly all right to sneer at someone for stealing someone else's seat.
If you need two (or three...) seats buy them. Don't steal from your neighbours.
Airlines have overcrammed more seats into each plane than the original designers would have believed possible. When people complain, they respond with "You're freakishly tall," or "You're mbidly obese," when the real answer is "The airlines are so greedy they're cramming so many people into their cargo hold it would make a slave trader of old boggle."
My 5'2", 100lb mother-in-law complains that they've made the seats too small to be comfortable, and she's been flying for 50 years. Do we really think the problem is Kevin Smith is too husky?
How about this for an answer? Let's make airline seats the same size and legroom as movie theater seats and see if the problem goes away.
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"Customer of Size"? Is that like "People of Color"? Has political correctness come so far that you can't even call someone a fatass any more? I'm with Southwest on this one. Brilliant director or not, if I had to spend an "Evening with Kevin Smith" squished up against him in a coach-class seat, I would not be happy and would be demanding my ticket price back. They tried to accommodate his special request to fly early and couldn't. He should graciously accept their apology (it's more than he would have gotten from me).
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Dear Fucktarded PR-Challenged Fatty-Haters at @SouthwestAir: Your "apology" blog is insulting, redacted bullshit. FULL details in two hours.
According to TFA Kevin Smith claimed to be sitting in the seat with the armrests down before he was asked to leave the plane. He also claimed to have purchased only one ticket when flying the first leg of his trip. He was kicked off on his return leg.
The Southwest PR people seem to be stretching the truth in their side of the story. I think that the Southwest policy to require the purchase of two tickets when some one cannot fit between the armrests of one seat is generally a good one. However, I think the pilot was overzealous in enforcing the policy. Southwest has not apologized for the mistake they actually made. They merely said, "we're sorry that you don't like our policy." They need to say "we're sorry that we misapplied our policy," in this instance.
Yep, I fly a lot too, SWA's response is very nice and very reasonable. It's a LOT more than other airlines, say American, would do. In this case the customer IS wrong and SWA points that out in a nice way.
Mr Smith is acting like an asshole. That sort of language isn't going to win him any sympathy from SWA even if they WERE wrong.
As a traveler I hare airlines. They are a bunch of snivelling money grubbing slime balls who would never give anyone an inch more room than they paid for in blood.
The main reason airlines never give 'anyone an inch' is because their profit margins are unbelievably small - They transport thousands a day. An inch here and inch there, and suddenly they're bankrupt.
This happens largely because airline passengers day to day often have little brand loyalty. They simply shop for the cheapest fare.
If a company wants my loyalty, they have to be loyal to me. Pretending to give a shit when my luggage goes missing or waiving the cost of one of those padded sleeping goggle whatchamacallits instead of carrying on like I'm trying to screw them out of the 2c those things cost would go a long way
Right, but you're the exception, not the rule. Airline customers *claim* they'd pay more for a fare that included things like free eyemasks and pretzels, but then when the time comes to book a ticket they pick the airline with the cheapest fare. Airlines have, in the past, tried to be 'loyal to you' and have learned it gets them nowhere, at least in the USA and Canada. Customers aren't interested in good service, they're interested in getting where they're going on the cheap, pure and simple - And with respect to service, passengers have reaped what they've sown. Compared to 20 years ago, airline fares are dramatically cheaper, and service is dramatically worse. Coincidence? I think not...
Actually they sell freight space and the meat they transport is the least profitable as it requires to be heated and fed in a pressurised cabin (it also complains) where as most other freight can happily sit in an unpressurised hold.
The reason airlines in the US started charging for baggage is to dissuade you from bringing more of it (you should have figured this part out already). Now most people assume that this is to cut down on weight, wrong. Airlines can sell the space they freed up to logistics companies who want to move small sized parcels to other parts of the country or world rapidly. This appears cheaper but has a much higher rate of return per KG and is more steady and less problematic then the meat transportation business.
Budget Airlines like Tiger, Air Asia and Ryan Air make all of their money on freight, the passenger service is only expected to break even.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
What's your point? It's OK to be morbidly obese as long as your wife is hot? Does it occur to you that health might be something worth considering hot wife or no?
For many men (both heterosexual and homosexual), particularly those who are single and under the age of 40, a key motivator to get fit is not 'health reasons.' Rather, it's the desire to be more sexually attractive to a mate. In Kevin Smith's case, this motivator isn't present. He's already got an attractive mate. Therefore, in his case a key incentive to lose weight, quit smoking and reduce drug use isn't present. Usually the next driver comes after a health scare (i.e. heart attack or diabetes), and that may not happen for another 10-15 years.
You seem to want First Class elbow room at steerage prices. For that you can't blame fat folks, you can blame your cheapness or poorness.
No, we can blame the really fat guy encroaching onto our seat. The seat that we paid for. The seat that would be fine if it weren't for the guy next to us being really overweight. Airline seats are a certain size. In economy they're pretty small because fares are so damn cheap. Why the hell should I have to pay for a first class seat just to get the elbow room I deserve in economy? This isn't about being poor or being cheap, it's about someone being too fucking big to fit in an economy seat. Let the fat guy spend the cash on a bigger seat in first class. How dare you say it's my responsibility to pay extra cash to accomodate the obesity of someone else. If anyone is being too cheap/poor in this situation it's the fat guy who won't spring for the extra seat that he needs, or one larger seat in a higher class.
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