Kevin Smith: "I'm never going on Southwest again."

Film director Kevin Smith had bought a ticket for a flight on Southwest Airlines, but was taken off the plane. Smith is a heavier set man, and Southwest has a "customer of size policy," this policy states that if someone can't fit into a seat comfortably and safely, they have to buy a second seat. Kevin did not buy a second seat for this flight, he says it is not necessary. He states that he had no problems with buckling his seat belt and lowering his armrests, and according to the policy, if he could do this he should have been fine. Smith says that he is "not fat enough to [be] ejected off a Southwest flight," the reason he thinks that he was taken off of the flight was because one of the employees did not like his comic films. Southwest has called multiple times to apologize, however Kevin claims he has not received any calls. Also Smith claims that he will never go on a Southwest flight again, but has bought ten tickets in the past week with Southwest Airlines.

I find this story extraordinarily interesting for a few reasons, for one, I find it appalling that airlines would discriminate against heavier people in this way, also there are many things in this story that don't really match up, or that make it difficult to decide which side is telling the whole truth/ which side to go with. Ok so to start with my first point... it is surprising to me that they have a policy concerning that if people are bigger that they have to buy two seats, yes I understand that it is in concern for their other costumers and making them comfortable and such, but still.. And if they are going to really take people off a flight because they claim the person is "too fat" then I think that they need to make a deal with that person, such as a discount on their, now required, second seat and they need to book them on a new flight. I've never heard of anything like this before, and frankly, to me it is shocking. My second point... there are many different things in the article that don't match up which can only lead to the fact that someone is lying somewhere down the line. The first thing is the plain fact that Kevin was taken off of the plane, he claims that he could buckle his seatbelt and put the armrests down with no issues at all, well obviously it must have been pretty close or there are just different opinions on this or something, because he was taken off the plane. The second part is that the article says that Southwest Airlines executives have personally called Kevin to apologize, but he says that he hasn't gotten a call. Someone is not telling the truth there... A third thing is just against Kevin, he says that he is "never going on Southwest again" but then the article says that in the past week he has bought ten tickets through Southwest, what's up with that? A final point is that Kevin said he's not too fat to get taken off of a flight, and that someone took him off because they don't like his comic films. If that's true, that's just horrible, no one should judge if he can ride a plane or not by what they think of his films. So there are many different questionable items in this article. I still feel bad for Kevin and others who have gone through this, and I don't necessarily agree with it, but I can also understand where the airline is coming from.

http://www.cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/Movies/02/15/kevin.smith.southwest/index.html?eref=rss_topstories&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fcnn_topstories+%28RSS%3A+Top+Stories%29