Thursday, July 29th, 2010

Cheap fares, whether they are cheap airplane tickets and cheap vacation packages are great so long as a passenger is not involuntarily bumped from a scheduled flight. Southwest is attracting a lot of press for bumping a skinny woman from a flight so that an obese passenger needing two seats was able to fly.

Recently Southwest Airlines garnered a lot of negative attention for bumping Kevin Smith, a Movie director, from a flight because he was supposedly too fat to fly in a single seat.

Lawyers have observed that there is no law prohibiting discrimination based on body type. Being skinny or overweight is not a class of people (such as minorities or women) who are protected against prejudice.

Southwest’s latest controversial bumping incident happened on a flight from Las Vegas to Sacramento. A thin woman purchased a full price standby ticket. She successfully secured the last seat on the flight. After she had taken her seat, an obese passenger walked onto the plane.

The flight crew requested that the thinner passenger give up her seat so that the obese passenger could occupy two seats. Southwest defended its decision because the obese passenger in question was a 14 year old teen that the airline did not want to leave stranded.

What was surprising about how Southwest handled the situation was that it did not ask for a volunteer to give up a seat. The bumped woman was placed on the next flight and her ticket was refunded.

The bumped passenger later commented that she felt it was not right that she was forced off the plane to accommodate someone who had only paid for a single seat. She claims that she was berated by Southwest personnel when she questioned the decision to involuntarily bump her off the flight.
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