I may be biased towards this article since I travel a lot and have never flown with another airline besides Continental, but I think it was simply rude for Southwest to deny Kevin Smith a seat on the plane. I understand Southwest's argument that overweight people only occupying one seat are a safety issues and basically a hassle to their other passengers but the attendant’s who denied him a seat should have known better than to publicly humiliate a Hollywood director. James states in the CNN article that he could properly fasten his seat belt and lower the arm rests so he never should have been asked to leave the aircraft. It's a sad truth but I'm sure many fans of Kevin James' as well as people who are overweight are going to have second thoughts about booking with Southwest in the future. In this situation the PR people of Southwest can try their best but there isn't really an easy way out except to continually apologize to Kevin James and many throw in some free flights or frequent flyer miles
i agree with your bias because i only fly continental as well, but you're right, southwest should have never treated a customer in that manner, especially someone of his public status. Smith even said that he had no issues fitting into the seat, so if that was the case i cannot figure out why he was removed from the plane. southwest looks ridiculous at this point and they have a lot of damage control to implement. i know i probably won't consider southwest, regardless of how cheap their tickets are.
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