Posted on 07/26/2010 2:35:27 PM PDT by MissTed
Edited on 07/26/2010 3:15:37 PM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
Earlier this year, Southwest Airlines, came under fire for removing an overweight passenger from a flight. Now, five months later, the airline has done it again – but this time they kicked off a thin passenger to make room for an obese teenager, MyFoxdfw.com reported.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Put the fatties in the cargo bay.
Lucky she didn’t call the teenager “fat.” She probably would have been prosecuted for “hate speech” and placed on a do-not-fly list for the rest of her life.
Ah, life in Obamerica.
Um, she was flying standby. If the fat teen had previously reserved his two seat and paid for them in advance, she may have grounds to complain about how she was asked to get off, but not for the fact that she was.
Wow, this is ridiculous. I guess it’s good to be fat, and getting a seat for free.
Thin people should be able to request a no fatties section, and they should tag overweight passengers before they get on the plane.
I’d get me an agent if’n I was her! She should be on Oprah, Nancy Grace, Larry King..
did I read that right, the double wide was a 14 y-o?
does it say that in the article?
If he paid for two seats, he gets two seats. No different than a person who pays extra for a musical instrument.
No, no.
The fat kid only paid for ONE seat.
Why are there no names or photos in this story? Common, a teenager too fat to sit in one seat and nobody thought to take a picture. Did they think it would be too embarrassing? I’d say it’s a about 500,000 calories too late for that sentiment.
are we sure?
in any case she was on standby.
“It didn’t seem right that I should have to leave to accommodate someone who had only paid for one seat,”
here’s a video of the woman and the kid. You’ll she was rightly kicked off. Poor kid!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MD6Cx0qzRA
The overweight teen should have been kicked off, imho.
She was flying standby
I stopped reading right there.
The missing information is whether the teen HAD purchased two seats prior to the flight. I would guess that the answer was no, since the crew seemed to think they had room for the standby customer up until they realized that the teen required an additional seat : / Tis just a guess, since none of those details are in the article, but it seems reasonable enough.
No the plumper was a full fare passenger. The normal woman was a standby.
Or better yet FedEx em!
Rather than being tolerant you go for the usual bash. Shame on you. What if this had been a star athlete, say NFL? The kid might have a medical condition rather than just liking to eat. Funny, how people don’t consider that. If the poor guy has kidney problems he might have been light a year or two ago, but gained since. I feel bad for the lady, but she was flying “standby”. She did not have a seat on that flight. People are treating the kid as if his seat wasn’t paid for. Part of the problem with airlines is that the designed the cabins to carry more people with less comfort (seat size, let room, head room). Where’s the outrage over that?
The article didn’t say that, did it? I do wonder why jumbo wasn’t told to take the next flight since she was late, tho.
Even if he did pay for two, he (she/it??) should probably have been denied the flight.
You’re rude.
Would you suggest the same thing if the passenger were a NFL player? Shame on you.
Not funny. You are mean and rude.
Why?
If you fly standby and space is available, should you not be allowed to board?
Of course. So she was boarded. She got on the plane.
THEN.... a passenger - fat/thin doesn’t matter - shows up late - after everyone is seated.
You think it’s OK for that late slob to bump off a paid passenger?
I didn’t think so.
Tolerance is libspeak. If you too fat, buy two seats.....and show up on time before they seat the standbys
Overweight people have feelings too. Guess it doesn’t matter though, because this is a “fat” person. And it definitely doesn’t matter that it’s a “fat” kid. All fat people are fare game for the rude folks like those on this thread. Thought FReepers were better folks. Guess I was wrong.
have any of the knee jerk reactions even been in an airplane lately?
The seats spaces are so small it would be illegal to hold animals in such a space.
LOL!
No recent photos of the kid, but here he is in his younger years.
OK, all you fat-haters, you are assuming the teen did not have to pay for the seat because the short, skinny woman said so. The article says no such thing, and if you read Southwest’s policy, they MAKE oversized passengers pay for the seat, if the plane is full. The article has conveniently left out whether or not the teen was charged the full fare, but their policy on their website states clearly that they must if they cannot put down the arm rests. The oversized passenger (the teen) likely paid for the seat because she had to. The skinny lady was a late arrival (standby) so, she was not guaranteed a seat, and the ‘fattie’ teenager, as you people have judged her, had bought a seat.
I think you people are being very unfair to the child in this situation. Fat teens are subjected to humiliation all the time. Fat adults are subjected to humiliation all the time. In my opinion, the ‘grown-up’ in this situation, with the STANDBY ticket behaved like a child. I don’t care if she paid full fare.
And many of you are reacting like children as well. Think about that poor teenager and how humiliating this incident probably was for him/her. I see people who are on standby not make it on the plane all the time. They don’t cry like little babies about it.
Yes, actually, she did. She had a seat as soon as they gave her one on standby, presumably because the girl was late. SWA fooked up by taking the woman's seat and giving it to the girl.
See post 29.
As I understand ‘standy’, you will be boarded and seated if a fully booked plane has a ‘no-show’.
Evidently she was boarded. She was on the plane. Per the article; she was asked to leave the plane.
If you’re on a plane, then yeah. You DO have a reason to expect to fly.
Unless SWA has an idiot policy that allows latecomers to hold up 100 + people and board at will.
Southwest would have been asking for a lawsuit if they booted off the customer who had booked in advance in order to make room for a standby customer.
“If the fat teen had previously reserved his two seat and paid for them in advance”...
Fatty paid for one seat. If fatty could not fit in the seat, then fatty shouldn’t fly until he or she buys another ticket. But since the last ticket has been sold at full price, fatty should have had to wait.
Where I come from that'd be worth a free flight later that evening, and two vouchers for future flights. I'm all for the pound of flesh gambit.
Frequent fliers will know that sometimes you can get to the airport sooner than you had expected and try to catch an earlier flight. If your ticket isn’t unrestricted, you have to pay for the change and be willing to standby for the earlier flight. I’d say something like this was going on.
Having flown South West frequently, I’ve observed that they do not like to turn away late arriving passengers who miss the 20 minute gate check-in window where their reservation is subject to cancellation and a standby can be given their seat. SW tries to accommodate these last-minute folks.
I’m guessing the kid had tickets for two seats and rather than send an airplane out with an open seat, the agent elected to pull the standby and seat the doublet thus filling out the cabin. Just my very educated guess.
The biggest mistake SW made was letting this get into the news. They could have bought the girls silence for a lot less than a year of free flying.
‘berating’
You make a good point. Upon reading the article I just assumed overweight=overeating, a medical problem didn't even occur to me. Anyway you look at it being fourteen and obese must be pretty hard, whatever the reason.
Can someone please find the information in the article where it said the teenager was late arriving? I can’t find it anywhere. Oh, that’s because people on this thread are making assumptions about what happened and judging this young person unfairly because of their prejudices.
Original article
http://www.sacbee.com/2010/07/24/2911747/petite-flier-booted-off-southwest.html
The key sentence:
Why the extra concern? The person(girl) requiring two seats was just 14 years old.
Southwest was probably hamstrung by federal law, anti-discrimination against the fat kid.
Believe me, the airline would rather sell the extra seat that obese passengers may now demand for free. It’s an absurdity, but the airlines’ hands are tied.
The skinny lady’s problem was that, even paying full-fare, she was flying standby, which meant she was at the top of the bump list if she didn’t have a confirmed reservation.
The article is short on info so we don’t the situation or whether the teenage girl had paid for both seats or was charged for the seat when it became evident it was needed in order for her to fly. Apparently the girl had a seat booked and it maybe that the standby seat was needed to meet the requirements of the airline’s “customer of size regs”. We just don’t know.
You are correct about the guidelines for seats according to the Southwest Airlines website.
Southwest Airline Site:
Guidelines for Customers of Size
Customers who are unable to lower both armrests and/or who compromise any portion of adjacent seating should proactively book the number of seats needed prior to travel. The armrest is considered to be the definitive boundary between seats and measures 17 inches in width. This purchase serves as a notification of a special seating need and allows us to process a refund of the additional seating cost after travel (provided the flight doesn’t oversell). Most importantly, it ensures that all onboard have access to safe and comfortable seating.
For more information, please refer to our Customer of size Q&A: http://www.southwest.com/travel_center/cos_qa.html
Or the woman’s.
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