Fat Policies

[talon]

http://www.cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/Movies/02/15/kevin.smith.southwest/index.html?hpt=Sbin

Yanno, I uderstand that skinny people are ubersensitive about sitting next to a fat person - I guess they are afraid they might catch "fat" from the fat person or discover being fat isn actually kinda fun or (insert any of a hundred reasons skinny people are intolerant of fat people). I understand that sometimes, some people are so fat they need 2 seats. I understand that most airlines have "fat policies" but not "skinny policies".

What I don't understand is the uneven application of their "fat policies" (Southwest's appears simple and easy to administrate: the arms of the seats must be able to be lowered comfortably). If a passenger can lower those seat arms comfortably, then that should be the end of the matter. The fat one flies in a single seat. Fini. If the arms can't be lowered comfortably, then the large passenger should politely be given options: buy another seat if it's available, or accept a voucher, a meal, and take a later flight for the inconvenience, or - if possible (and I don't know if airlines are customer-friendly enough to do this anymore), switch the ticket without penalty to another airline that can accommodate the passenger if it's leaving sooner than another flight by the original airline.

What I don't understand is telling a passenger that they are "unsafe" to fly on the plane. I could understand that if they were flying with medical equipment - oxygen tanks, an IV with controlled substances dripping into it, that sort of thing. But fat is unsafe only for the person who is fat. Fat is not contagious. Fat people don't spontaneously explode, even at flight-high elevations. Fat people are not inherently dangerous just because they are fat.

Southwest is at fault here for not evenly applying it's very own "fat policy" and for the pilot (according to what Mr. Smith said earlier in a different place) telling him he couldn't fly because it was "unsafe".

I want a "skinny policy" too, whereby if a skinny person intrudes on another passenger's seat (head lolling, slumping, feet propped up on the forward passeenger's seat, etc.) then that person has to pay for a second seat. Skinny people, in my experience, take up far more space than fat people because they think it's their right to sprawl where they will. Fat people have been made uber-conscious of their space requirements and are generally much more polite about intruding on the space of other people - they rarely sprawl, prop feet up on others, or use their neighboring passenger as a pillow. The most common intrusion fat people make is with hips and shoulders, and those are far less offensive than the head on your shoulder, bad breath in your face, drool down your blouse, snoring in your ear of a skinny neighbor's intrusiveness, or their stinky feet propped up over your head or beside you between the seats and onto your food tray, or the myriad other ways skinny people intrude on other people's space.

That there have to be "fat policies" annoys me. Why not call it "common sense policies" or "intrusion policies" and apply it to anyone who intrudes on another's seat, regardless of weight? Intrusion is intrusion, and weight doesn't govern that near as much as some people like to think.

I used to love to fly. Airlines were polite and nice and airports were fun. Now, it's all meanness. I guess this is just more of the meanness.

Haven't they heard - nice matters?