I had a similar experience 2 yrs ago on Southwest oddly (or maybe NOT so odd) it was also on a flight departing from Oakland.
I had flown regularly on Southwest Airline and have flown with them approx 25 times in 2 yrs the two years since then. I regularly received a number of member flight awards and achieved A list status. In all of this travel this was THE ONLY TIME that I was ever made to purchase an extra seat.
I was traveling w/co-workers & was completely embarrassed in front of them and also had to suddenly fork out personal cash so I wouldn't loose my job. Of course I am not famous and did not have a twitter back then so there were no apologies or $100 voucher offers made by Southwest.
For those of you who are jumping on the "we hate you fat people" bandwagon, I do fit comfortably, have no problem buckling the seat belt without an extender, and the seat armrests go down all the way, by the way. The young kid at the counter was 5'0" and about 125 lbs., in case you were wondering. From his perspective I would imagine that yes, I am a "person of size", just like from my perspective he was a "person of no size", with a bad attitude, who was incredibly rude and took great pleasure in wielding what little authority he has to control the world.
I understand those folks who don't want to take a flight and be uncomfortable or have their space infringed upon. If this was a common occurrence, if it happened regularly, then I would say that this Southwest employees judgment was sound, but that is the ONLY time that this has happened I would say that the guidelines allow too much subjective opinion.
If only they had similar discriminatory policies for people who snore too loudly, kids who are loud and won't sit still, people who cant seem to figure out where to store luggage that is too large, and ridiculous men trying to recapture their youth by spending the entire flight trying to hit on the young female sitting on the other side and your trapped in between listening to horrible pick up lines.
This is the only truly negative experience I have ever had with Southwest both prior to and since... but with the incidents that have come to light since Mr. Smith first began tweeting it definitely seems like something that needs to be reviewed and addressed.
Of course now that I have tweeted this I suppose Southwest will use my email to flag my rewards account and begin to head me off at the front desk from now on each time that I fly, in order to make enforcement of their policies much more consistent.
... View more