Southwest Airlines Are Giving Free Seats To ‘Customers of Size’

Southwest Airlines has received both praise and criticism over their policy that gives obese passengers a second free seat to hold their extra large frames.

Southwest didn’t make a big deal about announcing its “Customer of Size” policy, instead it came to the publics attention after fat TikTokkers started educating each other on how to take advantage of it. 

Zero Hedge reports: The standard for getting a free extra seat strikes us as a little vague. According to the airlines posted FAQ: 

“The armrest is the definitive gauge for a Customer of size. It serves as the boundary between seats. If you’re unable to lower both armrests and/or encroach upon any portion of a seat next to you, you need a second seat.”

As word spreads and more and more heavy people belly up to take advantage of the policy, maybe we’ll see test seats at Southwest gates akin to luggage size-testing boxes. 

While it’s not mandatory, the airline encourages jumbo flyers to buy a second seat in advance and then ask for a refund:

“The purchase of additional seats serves as a notification of a special seating need and allows us to adequately plan for the number of occupied seats on board. It also helps us ensure we can accommodate all customers on the flight for which they purchased a ticket and avoid asking customers to relinquish their seats for unplanned accommodation.” 

That last part is particularly worrisome, as it anticipates times when the “customer of size” policy compels Southwest to bump a normally-proportioned passenger to clear a second seat for a huge one.

According to the New York Post, that hard-to-swallow scenario is exactly what was imposed on a mother and her two teen sons, who were told that their flight home after a vacation was overbooked.

“Please help me understand why do I have to spend the night without any accommodations in Baltimore because an oversized person didn’t purchase a second ticket,” she wrote in a TikTok video account of her treatment. The video captures a Southwest employee telling her, “Even if there are not enough seats, we have to accommodate that customer of size.”

The free seat policy is apparently unique among domestic carriers. “Southwest is the only airline that allows you a second seat at no extra cost even if the flight is fully booked,” wrote self-identified “fat solo traveler” Kimmy in an October video that brought the woke policy to widespread attention. In the video, she boasts of eating up a free second seat more than a dozen times already.

Just the latest example of declining American society encouraging self-destructive behavior and then distributing the costs to everyone.