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
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
They wouldn’t have given away the teen’s seat if she had been there on time, right? Except for the fact they probably didn’t know how fat she really was until after she showed up the teen really was stealing the skinny lady’s seat.
It doesn't say she was late. It just says the other woman sat down first. Airlines often start giving standby fliers seats before everyone is on the plane and seated if they think they have empty seats. The teen could have also been stowing luggage or talking to someone they were traveling with that was sitting elsewhere on the plane. They might have even moved the teen from where she had been sitting to the seat next to the one that wasn't booked in advance so she would have more room.
When you fly standby, the airline accommodates you if they can. Passengers that booked in advance get accommodated first.
If it is the first time the teen has flown, or has flown since gaining significant weight, she can claim ignorance, and unless she was traveling alone booting her off causes additional problems. Next time she can't and should be forced to book two seats.
I'm sure the airline would have preferred to sell the additional seat. They didn't do this to make more money. They just did what they could in a bad situation.
Then you missed the part about the tiny woman paying for her seat and the teen not paying for the second seat. Pays to read.
Young person was no doubt an unaccompanied minor, and they wouldn’t bump a um.
“The frequent flier said she was also berated by the crew when she began to protest... “We know this was awkward and we should have handled it better,” Marilee McInnis said.””
You couldn’t make this stuff up
The point is that fat people are developing a sense of entitlement now that their ranks are expanding rapidly. The seat was stolen from that woman, and a lot of fat people think that they are entitled to two seats for the price of one. Many of us have had to “share” our seats with the morbidly obese.
I don’t give a flying @#!$ about the “feelings” of our increasingly militant obese Americans. In this case, however, the fault was with SWA. They should have simply told the fat teen that she missed boarding and that in any event she would need two seats.
Finally, lots of us lead sedentary lives and tend to gain weight. All of us need to do something about or quit making excuses (myself included).
I wouldn’t bump an “um” either, or a schmoo, for that matter. ;-)
It pays to know what standby means.
The Sacramento Bee version says twice the teen was late.
That being said, neither the Fox version nor the Bee version say that SWA confirmed the teen did NOT pay for the additional seat. That was only said by the offended small woman. No one quoted the SWA officials as saying the teen did not pay for the seat.
If they show up later than 20 minutes prior to scheduled push back, they have no rights to a seat and, in fact, could be substantially charged for having to change their tickets. A bumped pax, under those circumstances, would have a ton of recourse.
However, South West doesn’t sell seats on the web, except through their own site. They don’t interline bags or accept other airlines’ tickets. Therefore, the various levels of tickets and priority are fairly easy to work out for them.
For a Conservative site, we have so many acting like liberals. Throwing out insults like “fatty”, “plumper”, etc. I would suspect you’d find this sort of sophomoric language on the likes of DU instead of FreeRepublic. Now of course I’m going to guess that all those who are hurling insulting names are themselves well within the range of weight for their height. They themselves are perfect specimens of humankind (do I seriously need a sarcasm sign for this one?).
I fly standby. I know, probably better than most here. Actually there are many different kinds and reasons for standby.
Yeah, but a teenager too fat to sit in one seat? That's got to be an exception. Maybe Michelle could adopt him as a poster boy on her let's all eat good campaign. For obvious reasons she couldn't use pictures of herself.
Think of the ads." This kid was so fat he was bumping skinny people off airplanes. After ten weeks on my special diet, he's gnawing on his arms, but we think he's going to start losing weight."
The fat kid was a boy. He also only paid for 1 seat, per local DFW Fox news.
Airlines need to give it up, stop angering people, and just put in a row of fat seats in the back. This is stupid for business.
"A late-arriving passenger required two seats because of her girth."
Article linked from the one here says:
According to the Sacramento Bee, the woman had just settled in the last available seat only to be told she'd have to get off the plane, because an overweight passenger who needed two seats had just arrived late.
They don't start seating standby passengers until the time has run out for the ticketed passengers. For some reason they chose to make an exception for the 14-yo, and handled it poorly from then on.
"Last available seat / overweight passenger who needed two seats" doesn't compute. There must have been one empty seat even after seating standby passengers.
“Customer of size”
I love it.
Fourteen isn’t considered an unaccompanied minor. 12 is the cutoff for that designation.
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