Kevin Smith (Silent Bob-fame) battles Southwest Air

DoctorWho · 02-20-2010, 08:48 AM

Quick version. Last weekend, Kevin Smith had an opportunity to get on an earlier flight from Oakland, CA to Burbank, CA on Southwest Air, which he used frequently for short trips around the Western US. He had originally had 2 tickets bought for himself, not so much because of his size (he is a fat man, as he freely admits to), but so he could have some privacy on the flight. This earlier flight only had one seat available on reserve. So he went ahead and got the reserve ticket. He got called for the flight and boarded. After settling into his seat between two older ladies, a customer service rep came on and ask him to leave the plane because they had a "safety concern" with him on board. Even though Kevin could easily put down the armrests and the ladies in the seats next to him were fine, the lady still made him leave the plane. Needless to say, this infuriated Kevin as they never gave him a straight answer as to why he was really being removed, even though he knew it was because of his size. The hypocrisy of this is that there were other even heavier people on the plane, but Kevin took the bullet as he did not want the other heavy folk on the plane to get the same treatment. He put this all over his Twitter account http://twitter.com/ThatKevinSmith.

On the next flight he was on, he got two seats. After he was seated, another lady sat down next to the empty seat that was Kevin's 2nd seat. She was also of size. Another representative asked her to come to the front. She came back looking very disturbed and later told Kevin that they wanted her to buy a second seat, even though the seat next to her was empty. When Kevin heard this, this outraged him more as this was the second time in 2 hours this happened, but now to someone else.

After he got home, he posted a special episode of his podcast, Smodcast, spending 90 minutes going over the whole ordeal. Warning, Kevin is very frank with his language, but that just fuels his passion. (Besides, they're just words like any other.) http://smodcast.com/smods/smodcast106.html

A couple of days later, the lady who sat next to him contacted him, and he then recorded another 30 minute episode with her explaining what happened to her. http://smodcast.com/smods/smodcast107.html

The twist is that with Kevin lambasting SWA on Twitter and getting this picked up in the media, they issued an apology but admitted no guilt. Kevin called them on that, and the misrepresentation of facts that they reported. They came out with a second statement, now saying somethings mentioned before didn't exactly happen as stated, but still did not give blame to anyone.

So Kevin made a written post to try and put his final words over the situation.
http://silentbobspeaks.com/?p=394

So we have a case were someone who has a level of fame using the internet to bring light to this big corporate hypocrisy and bigoty.
Bill "the Doctor"

02-20-2010, 08:48 AM	#1
DoctorWho Avalon Senior Member Join Date: Sep 2008 Location: Central, IL Posts: 395	Kevin Smith (Silent Bob-fame) battles Southwest Air Quick version. Last weekend, Kevin Smith had an opportunity to get on an earlier flight from Oakland, CA to Burbank, CA on Southwest Air, which he used frequently for short trips around the Western US. He had originally had 2 tickets bought for himself, not so much because of his size (he is a fat man, as he freely admits to), but so he could have some privacy on the flight. This earlier flight only had one seat available on reserve. So he went ahead and got the reserve ticket. He got called for the flight and boarded. After settling into his seat between two older ladies, a customer service rep came on and ask him to leave the plane because they had a "safety concern" with him on board. Even though Kevin could easily put down the armrests and the ladies in the seats next to him were fine, the lady still made him leave the plane. Needless to say, this infuriated Kevin as they never gave him a straight answer as to why he was really being removed, even though he knew it was because of his size. The hypocrisy of this is that there were other even heavier people on the plane, but Kevin took the bullet as he did not want the other heavy folk on the plane to get the same treatment. He put this all over his Twitter account http://twitter.com/ThatKevinSmith. On the next flight he was on, he got two seats. After he was seated, another lady sat down next to the empty seat that was Kevin's 2nd seat. She was also of size. Another representative asked her to come to the front. She came back looking very disturbed and later told Kevin that they wanted her to buy a second seat, even though the seat next to her was empty. When Kevin heard this, this outraged him more as this was the second time in 2 hours this happened, but now to someone else. After he got home, he posted a special episode of his podcast, Smodcast, spending 90 minutes going over the whole ordeal. Warning, Kevin is very frank with his language, but that just fuels his passion. (Besides, they're just words like any other.) http://smodcast.com/smods/smodcast106.html A couple of days later, the lady who sat next to him contacted him, and he then recorded another 30 minute episode with her explaining what happened to her. http://smodcast.com/smods/smodcast107.html The twist is that with Kevin lambasting SWA on Twitter and getting this picked up in the media, they issued an apology but admitted no guilt. Kevin called them on that, and the misrepresentation of facts that they reported. They came out with a second statement, now saying somethings mentioned before didn't exactly happen as stated, but still did not give blame to anyone. So Kevin made a written post to try and put his final words over the situation. http://silentbobspeaks.com/?p=394 So we have a case were someone who has a level of fame using the internet to bring light to this big corporate hypocrisy and bigoty. Bill "the Doctor" Last edited by DoctorWho; 02-20-2010 at 08:52 AM.