14 DAY TRIAL // Over the weekend, director and actor Kevin Smith, known as Silent Bob to his fans, was taken off a flight with Southwest Airlines after a flight attendant told him he was deemed by the pilot a “safety risk,” which means staff considered him too fat to fit into a single seat. Upset, Smith took to his Twitter, personal blog and SModcast to vent his frustrations with the company’s decision, when in fact it had nothing to do with his being too fat to fly.
For starters, the director wants to set the record straight on his weight, pointing out the obvious: yes, he is overweight and he is fat but he is certainly not too fat to fly, whether with Southwest or any other airline company. Therefore, the excuse Southwest offered, namely that he was too fat to fit into a single seat and had to leave the plane and catch another flight because they could not provide him with a second seat, amounted to nothing but lies.
The truth is, Smith says in a very lengthy post meant to put all the facts out there that he was thrown off because he was the last guy to board the plane and the staff were already experiencing some problems with another customer who wanted two seats instead of just one. Since he was the last one to come in, he was the first to be asked to leave, but Southwest would simply not admit that – this also means he’ll have to live with the “too fat to fly” stigma for the rest of his life, as Smith puts it.
“I begged her [Linda, a spokeswoman for Southwest] to just put the truth in the about me and the seat belt and arm rest – at least admit you guys were wrong: that I wasn’t Too Fat To Fly. And while in phone call #1 it seemed promising, it didn’t happen. There was some standard corp-speak about how they’re going to examine their ‘Person of Size’ policy, and how they know it needs change. I sincerely hope it does. That [expletive] with the Girl on the flight was just heartbreaking and shameful. […] You guys screwed up, SWA; why’s it so hard to own up to it? Now I’m gonna carry this Too Fat To Fly [expletove] around like herpes for the rest of my life, and it was never even true. […] But wrapping up with a repeating of that 2 seat policy (the one THAT HAS NO BEARING ON MY CASE) is a reminder that you guys haven’t learned anything: you’re still blaming it on the Fatty,” Smith writes in the blog post meant to put an end to the Southwest drama.
In an hour and a half-long SModcast, Smith also says that, if Southwest insists he was too fat to fly, they might as well be correct all the way and change their seating and seats to accommodate larger persons as well. The problem is not that he, Kevin Smith, is fat, but rather that most American fliers are also overweight, so, instead of thinking of their best interest and comfort (all paying Southwest customers after all), the company is doing its best to cram as many fliers on a single plane. And this, according to Smith, cannot be.