Too Fat to Fly? Kevin Smith and Your Flight Rights

Kevin Smith, director of Clerks and Chasing Amy, launched a Tweet-a-thon against Southwest Airlines after he was booted from a flight last weekend for being too fat to fly--at least without paying for an additional seat.

After Smith launched a barrage of sometimes profane complaints about Southwest on Twitter, the airline apologized and offered a $100 voucher. Smith would have none of it, and his complaints have apparently prompted the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance to threaten a Southwest boycott.

Southwest has a long-standing policy requiring customers who can't lower both armrests and fit in in a single seat to buy an additional seat if they want to fly. Smith actually bought two seats for the flight he was scheduled to fly in an apparent admission that the two-seat rule applied to him. But he got to the airport early and wanted to hop on an earlier flight, which didn't have two seats available. That's where the controversy came in and when he claimed that, while he's fat, he's not that fat.

Smith's a powerful guy and successful enough to have more than a million followers on Twitter, which can make Southwest take note. But as someone who has been wedged between passengers who couldn't fit in their seats, I wonder why the rights of Smith's seat mates aren't equally important. I somehow doubt that the officials on that Southwest flight just decided they wanted to embarrass a passenger at random. They booted him because he didn't meet the rules and the rules are designed to protect the rights of all passengers--including the ones who fit comfortably in their seats.

It's worth noting that it's probably another one of Southwest's passenger-friendly rules that sparked the controversy in the first place. Southwest is one of the few airlines that will allow you to change your flight without paying a ludicrous change fee. (Check out The 29 Fees We Hate the Most.) If he was flying JetBlue, Virgin or almost any other major airline, the change fee would have cost more than the flight. Chances are, he would have kept with his original reservation and never thought to blast Southwest.

Skinny people don't have a support group, but shouldn't they also have rights? What do you think? If you pay for a seat, should you have the right to every inch of it? Should overweight passengers have to buy two seats, or is that unfair discrimination?

I'm thinking that if Southwest could just find a way to tick-off people who over pack their carry-on bags and get them to boycott too, this could be the perfect airline.