Go Back  Airline Pilot Central Forums > Airline Pilot Forums > Major
Fat Flyers on Southwest Pay Up >

Fat Flyers on Southwest Pay Up

Notices
Major Legacy, National, and LCC

Fat Flyers on Southwest Pay Up

Old 03-14-2005, 09:48 AM
  #1  
Gets Weekends Off
Thread Starter
 
SWAjet's Avatar
 
Joined APC: Feb 2005
Position: B737 Captain
Posts: 437
Default Fat Flyers on Southwest Pay Up

Airline making fat flyers buy extra seat

By DAN FITZPATRICK
March 13, 2005

All Murrysville, Pa., dentist Michael Gigliotti wanted was a relatively cheap, last-minute flight from his mother's house in Florida to a natural-gas auction in Texas.

But a $552 bill for the late-February trip quickly went up when a late-boarding passenger complained he could not fit in the seat next to the 5-foot-11, 300-pound Gigliotti. A supervisor from Southwest Airlines boarded the plane, crouched next to Gigliotti and said he would have to pay for a second seat on the return flight, claiming the dentist's large frame would not fit entirely in the 17-inch-wide space.

Gigliotti did not feel humiliation - just rage.

"This won't hold up in court," he told the Southwest supervisor.

"It already has," was her response, according to Gigliotti.

The exchange captures a touchy topic in aviation - how to deal with larger passengers as the nation's waistline expands. More than one-fourth of Americans are now classified as obese, and in an industry obsessed with fitting as many people as possible inside a giant aluminum tube, airline seats have shrunk to 16 inches measured from arm rest to arm rest - narrower than an average-size computer keyboard and a tighter fit than the typical office chair or general-admission movie seat.

"The airline seats are simply too small for a high percentage of the flying public," Gigliotti said. "We are getting bigger, we're getting taller, we're getting wider."

Southwest is not the only major airline with a large-seating policy. US Airways, Northwest Airlines and America West Airlines all can require an overweight passenger to pay for two seats but said they do everything they can to find a pair of empty adjoining seats on the plane at no additional charge.

Other carriers, including United Airlines and Delta Air Lines, have no large-seating requirements. Hooters Air, an airline featuring slim, scantily-clad "Hooters girls" as flight entertainment, has no such policy, either.

"We love large people," said Hooters Air President Mark Peterson. Hooters has never charged for an extra seat, he said, and fitting a larger passenger onboard has never been an issue in two years of operating the airline.

While critics of Southwest's policy acknowledge that other airlines do the same thing, some said Southwest deserves to be singled out for its rigidity. "Southwest really expects its employees to enforce it, " said Mary Ray Worley, a board member on the Sacramento, Calif.-based National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance.

At other airlines, she said, "it seems to me their employees exercise a lot more of their own judgment in enforcing or not enforcing their policies. A lot depends on the prejudices of the employees involved."

The large-seating policy is nothing new for the Dallas low-fare carrier, considered one of the industry's most successful companies, having made a profit 31 years in a row. It initiated a "customer of size" policy in 1980, requiring a larger passenger unable to fit in one seat to pay for two. But the airline, saying it could no longer ignore complaints from slimmer passengers, began enforcing the policy more vigilantly in 2002, requiring passengers to pay for the extra space even if others were available on the same flight. A refund is made available if the flight takes off with empty seats.
SWAjet is offline  
Related Topics
Thread
Thread Starter
Forum
Replies
Last Post
SWAjet
Major
30
07-22-2007 08:36 PM
fireman0174
Major
21
05-21-2006 04:09 PM
Baba Bluey
Major
7
11-14-2005 09:45 AM
SWAcapt
Major
2
10-20-2005 10:07 AM
captain_drew
Major
0
04-14-2005 02:52 PM

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Trackbacks are On
Pingbacks are On
Refbacks are On


Thread Tools
Search this Thread
Your Privacy Choices