Kevin Smith- Too Fat to Fly?

Southwest Airlines learned that you don’t mess around with someone who has 1 million Twitter followers. Kevin Smith,the director of Clerks and Chasing Amy, was booted from a flight last week for  being too fat to fly — at least too fat unless he was willing to buy 2 seats.  According to Kathy Kristoff, who writes the  “Devil in the Details column for  CBS Money Watch.com, Southwest tried to appologize and offer Smith a $100 voucher, but he wasn’t interested. Instead, he went Twitterbalistic, launching a barrage of bombastic tweets, that has lead The National Association of Fat Acceptance to  threaten a boycott of Southwest.

But being a good reporter, Kristoff points out  a. that Smith knew about the rule, because he had bought two seats for a later  flight, but wanted to bump up  to an earlier and fit in only one seat; and b. that Southwest may have been victimized in part , by its own generous policy that makes it easy to jump to another flight by not paying any penalties. Change on Jet Blue e.g. and you may pay more than the flight  itself cost.  Still, Southwest’s rule is that you have to be able to fit into a seat with both arm rests down, or you have to buy two seats:  Smith’s retort was,”  I maybe fat, but I am not that fat.”