14 DAY TRIAL // Southwest Airlines, like many other airline companies, has what is known under the term comfort policy, which means a passenger can be taken off a plane if staff deems him or her too fat to fit into one seat. This was the case with famed movie director Kevin Smith who, according to TMZ and his own tweets, was already seated when he was asked to leave the plane because he was a “safety risk.”
“Kevin Smith was thrown off a Southwest Airlines flight yesterday for being a ‘safety risk’ – a polite way of saying he was deemed too fat to fly. Smith was flying from Oakland to Burbank and was, according to his own tweets, already seated and ready to go when a Southwest attendant named Suzanne ‘told me Captain Leysath deemed me a “safety risk”.’ He flew into Oakland on a SW flight, and tweeted later that he eventually flew out on one as well,” TMZ writes of the incident.
Smith did not stop here either: upset about having been asked to leave a plane for which he had already bought a ticket on the grounds that he was too fat, he took to his Twitter, where he launched on a profanity-laden diatribe against the company. Southwest Airlines, on its part, would not answer calls for comment immediately; moreover, its official website went down for a few hours. When it was back up again, it also included a full explanation of what had actually happened.
As per Southwest’s “Not So Silent Bob” blog entry, Smith was not asked to leave the plane for the simple reason that he was deemed too heavy to sit comfortably only in one seat. He was also flying standby (meaning, catching an earlier flight than the one he had bought a ticket for) and could only be provided with one single seat instead of the regular two he usually purchases tickets for. Also, he did not even board the plane, Southwest says, so his claim that he’d been seated already when he was asked to leave is inaccurate.
“Southwest instituted our Customer of Size policy more than 25 years ago. The policy requires passengers that can not fit safely and comfortably in one seat to purchase an additional seat while traveling. This policy is not unique to Southwest Airlines and it is not a revenue generator. Most, if not all, carriers have similar policies, but unique to Southwest is the refunding of the second seat purchased (if the flight does not oversell) which is greater than any revenue made. […] If a Customer cannot comfortably lower the armrest and infringes on a portion of another seat, a Customer seated adjacent would be very uncomfortable and a timely exit from the aircraft in the event of an emergency might be compromised if we allow a cramped, restricted seating arrangement,” Southwest says as to the reason why Smith was offered a seat on another plane.