Southwest Airlines and Customers of Size

The hot topic in the today's news is the case of Kevin Smith and Southwest's two-seat policy for "customers of size." Mr. Smith bought two tickets for a flight from Oakland to Burbank. He was able to get on an earlier flight on which, unfortunately, two adjacent seats were not available. And that is where this tale of Southwest's public relations misadventure begins. Southwest Airlines determined that Mr. Smith did not fit into a single seat and asked him to deplane. This led to an exchange of blogs and tweets in which both parties wrote things they probably regret.

As a luxury travel consultant, my own issue in this incident is the entire question of comfort [sic] while flying in coach. I don't enjoy the "back of the plane" experience, but most of us who live in California do fly Southwest when traveling within state, and Southwest is an all-coach airline. SWA does offer a reasonably comfortable coach product with adequate pitch — their seats are not crammed as tightly as those of other airlines. Coach only becomes unbearable when the passenger in the neighboring seat is wider than that seat, and his/her body encroaches into your space.

I applaud Southwest's policy on "customers of size," requiring such passengers to purchase two seats.

As a Company committed to serving our Customers in Safety and comfort, we feel the definitive boundary between seats is the armrest. 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.

When an adjacent passenger occupies space you paid for (i.e., any portion of the vertical space between your armrests), it is simply unfair. Southwest's PR in response to this incident was unfortunate, but their policy is laudable.


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