Southwest Airlines vs. Kevin Smith, Part Deux

For the second time in as many days, Southwest Airlines has apologized to writer/director Kevin Smith. Why? It all started when the air carrier pulled Smith off a flight to Burbank Saturday because of his "size." Not unsurprisingly, this prompted Smith to post several messages on his Twitter page about the incident and promise on his website to "scorch the earth" with his complaints against Southwest, according to CNN.
Not unsurprisingly, Southwest has been backpedaling fast…mostly.
"We want to assure everyone that has expressed concern over the situation that we will use this experience in our customer service program when training our employees on the correct way to apply the policy," the airline said.
The "customer of size policy" implemented 25 years ago requires "passengers that cannot fit safely and comfortably in one seat to purchase an additional seat while traveling," said Southwest.
"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," the airline added.
"We're very sorry for how his night unfortunately played out," Southwest conceded in a written statement.
Apparently, Smith did purchase two seats for the flight to Burbank, but he was allowed to board an earlier flight as a standby passenger, and only one seat was available on that particular flight.
The extra seat is not a necessity, he said, but a luxury because "Southwest flights are cheap."
The airline said it "could have potentially handled our communication better," but defended "the determination that Mr. Smith needed more than one seat to complete his flight comfortably."
Smith says he never plans to fly Southwest Airlines again—it's an unfortunate public relations snafu for a carrier that reportedly had the lowest rate of passenger complaints among U.S. airlines last year.
In fairness to Smith and our "supersize me" North American culture, maybe the airlines should just install wider seats. Anyone who has traveled on a regional jet over the past 10 years can attest to the fact that if you're an ounce heavier than an anorexic runway model you can barely squeeze yourself into them.