Too Fat to Fly to Portland

I was on a flight from Las Vegas to Portland last week and witnessed a very sad, humiliating incident on Southwest Airlines. 

The plane was full and they had been calling for people to give up their seats for vouchers.  Even as we were all seated on the plane, they continued to ask for 1 person to give up their seat.  They asked continuously for about 10 minutes for someone to give up their seat.  Then, the gate agent and flight attendants came trolling down the isle.  In the front row, they found their victim.  As I'm in the third row, I can see and hear all this going down.  The gate agent leans down to this lady in the front row who is sitting in the middle seat, and talks to her for a couple of minutes.  I hear the man next to her say that he was fine, and she is not bothering him.  In tears, the lady in the front row gets up and says, "Apparently I'm too fat to fly.  They are asking me to leave."  So, her and her husband get all their stuff, wait for the wheel chair to take her back as it brought her there, and leave the plane.  A slim, pretty girl gets on the plane.  The one they apparently needed to accommodate.  I was sick to my stomach.  Now, I'm not good with guessing weights, but she wasn't crazy obese.  She was probably around 200 pounds.  She was able to sit in a seat, with the armrests down, and was not bothering the man on one side or her husband on the other.  The man even commented that she was fine.  If the people around you are ok, then who are you bothering?  The flight attendant?  She doesn't like overweight people and didn't want to look at her the entire flight?

Could it be that this had more to do with their oversold situation and less to do with her weight being a safety issue of the plane?  The gate agent and the flight attendants all witnessed this woman pre-board in her wheelchair, sit on the FRONT ROW OF THE AIRPLANE, and get settled in.  She had been on the aircraft for at least 20 minutes before they asked her to leave.  Why didn't they catch this "safety issue" as it was coming down the jetway, being seated, or sitting there quietly while the rest of the plane boarded?  How many times does this happen?  Southwest has a Customer of Size Policy that apparently is very subjective.

Southwest had another incident last week with Kevin Smith.   Apparently, they messed with the wrong guy.  See, Kevin is a director and has a huge Twitter following and started to sent out tweets immediately after being asked to leave the plane.  Southwest sent out an apology to Kevin, but still defended the practice.  Hey, I'm not saying you don't need a policy.  I'm saying maybe it shouldn't be quite so subjective.  You don't get kicked off unless it's an oversold situation?  I guarantee that if the flight would not been full, she would have flown.  IN HER MIDDLE SEAT. 

Maybe Southwest should work on refining their policies and not just using them when it's convenient.  I wish I knew that lady.  I would offer my testimony.