Plus-Size in the Skies? My Take on Southwest Airlines Policy for People of Size (From a 300lb Man)
Why Despite My Big Guy Status, I Just Can't Get With This Policy for Customer Experience Reasons
First off, thank you so much to those of you who are following me on AGGregator. I have been so busy since the end of last month with all things New Mexico State Football. It was pretty much a once in 60 years occurrence how successful they were, so I had to go all in to cover it, and I have got massive support from a fan base thirsty for real stories about their local college teams.
I will be blunt. I write to make a living, and if I don’t write, I can’t pay my bills, so that’s why I do what I do. I had to postpone writing about stuff on Consumer Beast in order to make that work, and now I am coming full force. I need to talk about consumer issues. Sports is fun, but to keep my sanity, I need more commentary about other things as well!
This one got me. Here goes.
I currently weigh 301 pounds fully clothed. That’s usually a pair of boxer briefs, socks, jeans, a t-shirt, and shoes. I weigh myself every Tuesday and Thursday while I donate plasma for money. If I weighed 100 pounds more, I couldn’t do it, but I also get paid more for being “of size” because they can take out 800ml of plasma every time instead of 600ml for little people.
I am not proud of that. I mean, I could be 190lbs and still do 800ml, so I don’t need to be 3 bills as the kids say.
James, the writer here is currently overweight.
I am NOT really fine with it. I have just gotten a little lazier as I got older. I eat a lot, but I also used to work out A LOT A LOT at the gym. I was 300lbs but also built like a linebacker lifting weights insanely every day.
Never really “struggled” with my weight, but being prone to being on the internet and a couch potato has sealed my fate as a big guy. It’s cool though, because I have the tools to lose weight if I wanted. That sounds like a drug addict. “I can get sober if I want to.” Ha, but no, I mean it. We shall see what 2024 brings.
I have lost more than 75lbs 2 times in my life. I lost 80 lbs in 2004, when I was 21. Reason? Not my health… I wanted to get laid, and I did. Was tired of being the chubby kid with no girls around me.
(This may sound crude to you new readers, but hear me out. I was 20 years old, an idiot, and not thinking about my future as much.)
2008? I lost 75lbs after putting a lot of weight on in 2006-07. What was the reason? I was going through a mental health emergency I believe. Bank of America was so toxic to me even back then, I had lost a couple close friends when we had a falling out, and my sister was a teenager abusing drugs in the house we lived in. I was going crazy. I used to work out every day, until I sweat through my clothes. I would only eat strawberries or pasta, and I drank a lot. A LOT because I was so unhappy.
Then I met Gabrielle, who I eventually married, and life has been great, although I have put on over 100 pounds since I met her. I still look good though, although not as good as her. :)
I have been fat, skinny, buff, overweight, skinny, emaciated, normal, chubby, super duper buff, and now I am overweight again. I can speak from every level of weight except morbid obesity on this topic.
What I have been lately is inclusive. I get that people don’t have the tools or they have issues that caused them to be the way that they are. Sometimes people experience trauma in their lives, and they overeat and shut down, and they are prisoners of their body again because of the effects of whatever happened. If someone says, “I’m fine with being big,” kind of like I am now, I will be ok with it.
However, there was a lot of militant people who would call you a body-shamer for the slightest comment about someone’s body not being perfect. If I said a 400lb person was more likely to die from heart disease, some crazy people would find a way to make your life a living hell, because “that is their choice to be big, blah blah blah.” Ok, fair enough. It’s your choice, that doesn’t make the statement untrue.
Tiktok and other social media is filled with plus-sized people who love their body, and I am all for that. Look at porn. Look at onlyfans. There’s a robust market for seeing plus-sized people (at least medically-statistics-wise) naked. Interesting.
But in the last year, something has happened. Ozempic, a drug that is not intended for weight loss, but diabetes, and Wegovy, which has been approved for weight loss, have been flying off the shelves. They are also being used recreationally in some circles to promote weight loss. There are blogs about it. There’s Tiktoks about it, There’s this whole buzz around it as a “miracle drug.”
This made me have a reckoning with how I felt about inclusivity with being bigger. It made me feel that the majority of people weren’t REALLY accepting of themselves, they were just looking for a quick fix that didn’t involve a scalpel and Dr. Now.
It really infuriated me, because I want to make sure that my support is not wasted on people who never really wanted it, they wanted to be thin by any means necessary, and with the substantial costs of those drugs, that told me as much.
Love being a bigger person if you want, and I will support you, but the amount of vitriol when even discussing body issues was far more toxic than the food we all consume. The people who are spending thousands to get these medications have pretty much ditched the “We big people got to stick together,” for a reality that they were just like the rest of us, including myself… Only caring about what I look like to others and finding easy support with people who may have it worse off.
Humans are low, man.
But if it means living a longer life, a healthier life, and one where happiness is key, then so be it. Go for the gold as a skinny person. I want you to be happy, much like I want to be happy too.
The influencer who promoted this policy, which has been around for 30 years, went viral on TikTok with it. This is how the NY Post wrote about it:
Plus-size TikTokkers are praising Southwest Airlines for its “customer of size” policy, which allows overweight passengers to request a complimentary seat and forces the flight staff to accommodate larger flyers — even if that means kicking others with tickets off the flight.
“If you’re fat, you know the anxiety of flying and this alleviates it a lot,” Caroline, a travel influencer who said she is a size 20, told her nearly 200,000 followers in a video posted at the end of October.
“I had a very comfortable flight just feeling like I was allowed to take up the space I needed.”
Now, this is where Consumer Beast James Baca, not jiggly belly James Baca has to step in.
These damn people are letting you in on a way to get people KICKED off a flight because you need more room. What the hell is going on here?!?!!?
I can sympathize with big people. I get it. This is going to sound fucked up, but I will have to say it. There were THREE times that a bigger person got stuck in my chairs in the office I had at Bank of America. Like, they got up and the chair went with them type of shit.
I had to help them pry it off their person, and two of the times other customers were looking in. One lady was in tears. I actually went to the back and cried too, because I could feel those customers eyes on her. I get it.
When that lady came in after that, I always gave her my nice $200 leather chair to sit on, a silent reminder of what happened before, but a sign of respect for her from me.
That being all said, as a person who worked in customer service, to have the potential of getting kicked off a flight from SWA, after they wrecked Christmas for millions last year, got fined $140 Million today for doing so, because someone else got prioritized over me? Nope, can’t have that.
What bugs me more than kicking someone off is determining who gets kicked off. If I have a SW Airlines Visa card, am I cool? So if I have extra business with you, I will be fine? What if I’m the only single person on the flight, BUT I am only flying because someone died, and I need to go home for the funeral? How can you possibly make that determination in that case?
Now, granted. It is a one in a million situation, but there are rules and answers to questions in FAQs for rare situations in life. That’s the part I don’t get. As a banker, too, I have a big problem with how SW and other airlines actually handle this policy.
Southwest, though, suggests customers purchase the extra seats in advance and then contact the airline “for a refund of the cost of additional seating after travel.
“Customers who encroach upon any part of the neighboring seat(s) may proactively purchase the needed number of seats prior to travel to ensure the additional seat(s) is available,” the policy says.
“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.”
It makes more sense this way. I don’t want to be kicked off, nor does anyone.
The contacting of the airline for a refund just is a little too much. Because I can foresee an instance where a person will buy 2 seats because they are big, and then proactively file a dispute with their bank electronically, instead of actually calling the airline and saying, “Hey, I’m plus sized and I had to buy two seats. Can I get a refund on the other seat please?”
Most people who need it aren’t the Tiktokkers flaunting their extra weight. They are demure, shy people. So if they decide to dispute it with their bank, the airline will likely defend themselves against the chargeback, instead of just assuming that the client is plus sized and wants their money back like that. So it now takes dozens of man-hours on both sides for the dispute. For some reason if the bank finds in favor of their client for just outright disputing it:
They technically just committed bank fraud by not going through the normal channels
They have now cost the airline the cost of the ticket
They also cost the airline a chargeback fee from their payment processor. Yes, it might be $35 or so for a billion dollar company, but those expenses now get passed down to me in other ways
I think the airlines like that option because most people will be lazy and forget to call or are just embarrassed, but it leaves them open to a whole bunch of problems like I just mentioned.
Under the Texas-based airline’s policy, customers whose bodies “encroach” past the armrest are entitled to an extra seat at no additional cost.
My body would encroach. Not because I am 300lbs, but because I have broad shoulders and a 52 inch chest from weight training. But if you look at me, you would not call me “Fat.” I wouldn’t even call me that, and I would agree that I have done absolutely nothing to make myself healthy in more than a year!
(note this was 5 years ago, but I am still that wide)
I’m wide, because I built myself up to be that way. If someone told me I didn’t qualify for this, because I happen to kind of look athletic still, even though the numbers and my health would probably say otherwise, then it becomes a eye-test thing for someone who has no right to do that, meaning a clerk on an airline.
That’s why this is a bad policy all-around on how it is currently constructed.
How would I change it? It’s hard to say.
I would suggest maybe some sort of application that a client can do on the airlines website that allows you a login which will claim the two seats for you instead of the whole awkward asking thing? I don’t know. Airlines are losing billions anyway, so why not?
Because if you plan it a month in advance, you can pick your spot on the plane, they can be acknowledged as big, so the 2-3 seat thing is already known and the plane can sell their seats with that knowledge so no one is affected.
There’s got to be a better way than what it is now. As it stands, because of health reasons, both physical and mental, some people will be in bigger bodies, and again, I will understand, acknowledge or support that. But this doesn’t mean you can or should be someone who ruthlessly affects others plans because of it.
Customer experience and service is all about working together for common ground. If you are an airline, and you cater to one while booting another, you just created a non-customer forever for that person and his or her friends and family. It’s not the way to do business.
This is a touchy subject, and I didn’t want to do it, but I felt my size, my understanding of the mindset of being big, which included the emotional part would make it ok to talk about this.
But I dealt with difficult customer service issues in the past, including having to pop off a chair from someone. Trust me, It’s hard stuff.
But I want you to see that photo I shared above again. Look what it says
Calls on hotels to enlarge hallways? So, a total remodel of the whole hotel to shave a few square feet out of each room to put it in the halls? Then what if you complain about the rooms being too small? Do you want a new hotel to accommodate you and allow you two rooms for free? Just say it.
The problem with advocates, and yes, that is what I call myself is that the bad ones are irrational to fixing problems, and it is not about “how can we make the experience better for everyone,” it is, “Make these things good for ME ME ME ME ME!”
I’m sorry, I can’t take someone seriously with the hallway thing. Yes, hallways are small, but you don’t live in the hallway. You are in a hallway for seconds, if not a minute. a remodel of a 2-3 floor hotel would be north of a million bucks just do even contemplate this.
Life is not 100% wins. SW Airlines has a policy that you should like, but don’t use it as a stepping stone to dunk on people for no reason and/or to call out businesses who didn’t accommodate 99.999% of people incorrectly. There are some things that just won’t ever be perfect.
Airlines are far from it, which is why this policy fits there. It doesn’t make sense but airlines are chaos anyway, so it survives there, amidst the chaos.
No matter how muscular I get, or if I get skinny again, I will always be a fat guy at heart. It is just my nature, and as I get older, I am more accepting of it, like a lot of these plus sized people. The difference between me and them is, I don’t want to use it as a reason to bring people down the same way I was brought down as a kid. Be better.
For airlines and any company with a policy like this. Think of short-term gains and long-term losses. Not in money, but in customer satisfaction. Will your company thrive by proactively impacting everyone else because of one client? It’s a game I would not want to play in this volatile industry.
I would love to hear your opinion on this!
James Baca - Consumer Beast (Currently 301lbs)