I do not know if any of you guy have heard of the Kevin Smith incident he had with Southwest Airlines. Kevin Smith was initially ejected out of the plane, because he did not fit into his seat that he paid for. When I was reading about this issue, I felt bad for Kevin Smith. Like no one imagines getting kicked off of an airplane because of their weight. After the incident, Kevin Smith posted a tweet saying, "I'm way fat, but I'm not there just yet," and "If you look like me, you may be ejected from Southwest Air." Southwest claims that "Customer of Size" policy require travelers to fit safely and comfortably in one seat or make other arrangements. It spread wildfire on the web and ended up with Southwest Airlines making a public apology tweet to Kevin Smith about the insensitive inconvenience. Apparently, Kevin Smith bought two seats for the airline originally, but only one seat was available at the time. Also, Kevin said he was able to fit the "Standard Customer Size."
After reading the comments, many people insensitively responded that Kevin Smith should just shut up and loose weight. Also how stupid Southwest Airlines caved in.
Kevin Smith Incident
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So my blog is about how businesses are accommodating and evolve with Americans that are getting bigger, rather than encouraging us to stop the habit and decrease the large numbers of obesity in America. My question is should Southwest airlines make larger seats for larger people or keep the same average seats sizes and if a large person cannot fit, to buy two tickets?
Kevin Smith Tweets
Since I work for an airline, I find this post extremely interesting. I have never heard of my airline doing something like this but I'm sure it happens seeing that all different types of people travel. On one hand, I don't think that it was fair that "fat" people are being told to "lose weight" so they could travel. But on the other hand, it also isn't fair that airlines have to accommodate people because of their personal weight decisions. I think it would be interesting to know if he had a seat in economy or not? I have sat in regular economy seats, and they aren't that spacious and I'm roughly average sized. Also, I wonder why the airline didn't offer him the opportunity to buy a first class seat, or two seats for the next flight to his location.
ReplyDeleteThis is a really great topic with an awesome example. America is definitely evolving to fit the consumers. I'm still not sure if it's a "business decision" or actual accommodation, because I can imagine certain corporations doing it just for profit.
ReplyDeleteWhy do you think that America in particular has this problem at all when most other countries don't? Again I personally think it points back to corporations exploiting human wants.